Decided to run a smart scan on one of my old laptops on which I had redirected all main user directories to another drive. Avast then comes back with this warning that my directories are open to a ransomware attack, it even goes as far as showing the filepaths to the directories, except as stated before, I had previously redirected all the directories to another drive. So Avast is using a default template that just grabs your username and assumes you have them in the default location without actually checking, then reports to you that they’re vulnerable to ransomware (which yes I know that redirecting the directory makes no difference to ransomware as it will just read the registry keys to find them)
I never use the default directories, but in theory they are still vulnerable to ransomware attack. But then again I expect Avast to protect against ransomware attack, after all it is an antivirus/malware product, or are they saying that they can’t.
If you are an Avast Free user, the smart scan in my humble opinion is more of a sales opportunity than any real protection. Which is one reason I rarely run any on-demand scan (outside of beta testing and questions in the forums) and this include the so called smart (NOT) scan.
You’ll find some more information on the “Smart Scan” here,
https://youtu.be/g73CbYvwFy8