How to Disable or Turn Off Email Scanning in Norton 360

To turn off email scanning in Norton 360 on Windows, open Norton, click Settings in the left pane, open the Features tab, click Antivirus under Security, and select the Email Protection tab. Uncheck Scan inbound emails (POP3, IMAP4) and Scan outbound emails (SMTP), and Norton stops checking the attachments that pass through your email program.

These steps are for Norton 360 for Windows with the current interface (version 24 and later, the design with Home, Security and Settings in a left pane), checked against Norton’s Email Protection instructions in October 2026. Norton lists Email Protection as a Windows feature. If your Norton window has a row of links such as Settings across the top instead, use the older steps further down.

What Norton’s Email Scanning Does

Norton calls this feature Email Protection. It watches the network ports your email program uses and checks attachments on messages as they arrive and leave. Incoming mail is scanned first and then handed to your email app, so the scan happens before you see the message.

It covers desktop email programs that use the standard mail protocols:

• POP3 and IMAP4 for receiving mail, which is how Outlook, Thunderbird and similar apps download messages.
• SMTP for sending mail.

Email you read in a web browser, such as Gmail or Outlook.com in Chrome or Edge, doesn’t go through these ports, so this setting has no effect on it. Norton’s new Norton 360 app overview also notes that Email Protection now works with any email client, not only Outlook, and that it scans connections secured with SSL/TLS.

Should you turn it off?

Most people who search for this have a specific problem: an email app that can’t connect, certificate warnings in Thunderbird, slow sending with large attachments, or a “VIRUS” tag added to a subject line. Turning off email scanning is a reasonable fix in those cases, and Norton’s other protection still works. Real-Time Protection (Auto-Protect) checks an attachment when you save or open it, so a harmful file is still caught when it lands on your computer.

If an attachment seems to be missing rather than blocked, first check the other causes of why you can’t see attachments in Outlook.

If the only thing bothering you is one extra feature, such as the signature Norton adds to sent mail, leave scanning on and uncheck that single option instead. The full list follows the steps below.

Turn Off Email Scanning in Norton 360 for Windows

1. Open Norton 360. Double-click the Norton icon on your desktop, or click the Norton icon in the notification area at the bottom-right of the taskbar. You may need to click the up arrow there to see it. The Norton main window opens.
2. Open Settings. In the left pane, click Settings.
3. Go to the Features tab. Click Features at the top of the Settings page. You’ll see the settings grouped into sections, with Security among them.

4. Open the Antivirus settings. Under Security, click Antivirus. The Antivirus window opens with several tabs.
5. Select the Email Protection tab. You’ll see a list of email options with a check box or switch beside each one.
6. Turn off incoming scanning. Uncheck Scan inbound emails (POP3, IMAP4).
7. Turn off outgoing scanning. Uncheck Scan outbound emails (SMTP).

8. Save the change. If an Apply button appears, click it. Close the window.
9. Restart your email program. Close Outlook, Thunderbird or whatever app you use and open it again so it reconnects to your mail server without Norton in between.

To confirm the change, return to the Email Protection tab. Both scan options should show as unchecked or off.

The other Email Protection options

The same tab holds a few settings you can change on their own, without turning off scanning:

• Add signature to the end of sent emails. Adds a Norton line to messages you send. Uncheck it if you don’t want recipients to see it.
• Scan attachments while attaching. Checks a file at the moment you attach it to a new message.
• Add to subject of emails with dangerous attachment. Puts a label in the subject line of a message with a suspicious attachment. The default label is VIRUS, and you can change it.
• Resolve certificate warnings in email apps. Helps you add Norton’s email certificate to an app like Thunderbird, which is the usual fix for “invalid certificate” warnings.
• Generate report file. Saves a log of Email Protection activity in C:\ProgramData\Norton\Report, which Norton support may ask for.

Norton’s Learn more about Email Protection article explains each of these.

Turn Off Only Outgoing or Only Incoming Scanning

You don’t have to turn off both. Each direction has its own setting on the Email Protection tab:

• Problems sending mail (slow sends, timeouts, errors when you click Send): uncheck only Scan outbound emails (SMTP).
• Problems receiving mail (messages stuck downloading, connection errors on refresh): uncheck only Scan inbound emails (POP3, IMAP4).

Keeping one direction on is a middle ground. Incoming scanning matters more for your own computer, since that’s how infected attachments arrive.

Older Norton 360 Versions

Legacy interface. This section is for older Norton 360 releases (version 22 and earlier) that open to a window with Settings, Performance and other links across the top. If your Norton window has a left pane, use the steps above.

1. Open Norton 360. On versions with the My Norton window, click Open next to Device Security first.
2. Click Settings at the top of the window.
3. Click Antivirus.
4. Click the Scans and Risks tab.
5. Scroll down to Email Antivirus Scan and click its switch so it shows Off.
6. Click Apply.

Instead of turning it off, you can click Configure next to Email Antivirus Scan. Norton’s Email Antivirus Scan options article explains the choices there: scan incoming messages, scan outgoing messages, check outgoing mail for worms, and Protect against timeouts, which stops your email program from timing out while Norton scans a large attachment. Click Apply after making a change.

These older versions also had Norton AntiSpam in Outlook. Norton removed the spam filter in version 24, so you won’t find it in current releases.

Troubleshooting

There’s no Email Protection tab. Make sure you’re on Settings > Features > Antivirus, not the Scans window. Then update Norton: open it, run LiveUpdate until it says your product is up to date, and restart the computer. If the tab still isn’t there, you’re likely on an older version, so use the legacy steps.

Thunderbird or another app says the server certificate is invalid. This comes from Norton scanning secure email connections. You can turn off scanning as shown above, or keep it on and import Norton’s certificate. Norton’s certificate warning guide has the steps: copy wscert.der from C:\ProgramData\Norton\AntiVirus to your desktop, then in Thunderbird go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Manage Certificates, open the Authorities tab, click Import, select the file, and check Trust this CA to identify websites.

Mail sends with an error after you turn scanning off. Some users report a “Must issue a STARTTLS command first” error when sending right after the change. Restart the email app first. If the error continues, open the account’s outgoing (SMTP) server settings and make sure the port and encryption type match what your email provider lists, often port 587 with STARTTLS.

Outlook still can’t connect. Check whether Norton is the cause by removing it with the Norton Remove and Reinstall tool (choose Remove Only) and testing Outlook. If the problem continues without Norton, it’s an email account setting. If Outlook works, reinstall Norton and restart the computer.

Email Protection keeps turning back on. A Norton update can restore some settings. Check the Email Protection tab after major updates and uncheck the two scan options again.

Norton blocked a file and you need it back. That’s handled by Real-Time Protection, not email scanning. To restore it, follow the steps for viewing quarantined files in Norton 360.

Frequently Asked Questions

What to Do Next

If Norton is slowing down your whole computer rather than just your email, the next setting to look at is the Norton 360 background scan, which you can turn off temporarily. And when Norton blocks an app from connecting at all, you can stop Norton 360 from blocking that program.