Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
21

Hi,
Someone said on the French forum that the “Avast MS Outlook Plugin” toolbar allows to manage emails before the avast mail shield quarantines them.
But, I don’t use it and this person is having problems with this plugin since the last windows update.
https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=291854.msg1642024#msg1642024

22

Thanks for that info from the French Forum, I’ve had a look at the discussion and must admit I’m totally unfamiliar with the Outlook Plug-in for Avast – didn’t even know it existed and at present wouldn’t know where to find it - so will need to investigate further. It would appear from reading this particular discussion on the French Forum that there is certainly a problem with Avast causing quite a few different ‘ False Positives’ and I think the ball is firmly in their court on this particular aspect of the problem. I have been using PC’s since they first became available to the general public and can’t ever recall a ‘real virus’ entering my PC, I’ve only ever had False Positives and always been able to deal with them by releasing from quarantine, and I started using Outlook Express, then Windows live mail, then Outlook stand-alone and now Outlook 365 so it’s strange that this problem has suddenly reared it’s head, a shame when I’ve used Avast for as long as I can remember and always recommended to friends and colleagues.

23

Just found the Pug-in and it is active but it would appear Avast no longer use this plug-in.

24

Hi,

I’m sorry you’re having trouble with avast. Can you please provide the Alert ID, which you can find in the bottom left corner of the detection dialog if it reappears?

Thank you in advance,
HK

25

I couldn’t be more helpful on this plugin that I don’t use.
The member there seems to say that his problem is recent, and I don’t know if it’s avast or Outlook that doesn’t use this plugin anymore or if it’s a MS bug with the toolbar.

26

Hi HK

Alert ID for most recent ‘Threat secured’ notification is fbcc292a79d5

27

Thanks a lot for the Alert ID, the detection was false positive and should not appear again. Please accept my apology for the trouble the mailshield has caused you.

Best regards,
HK

28

Thanks HK for fixing the false positive issue. Am I to assume that I’ll have to live with the other issue of being unable to recover quarantined mail due to the link between Avast and Outlook 365?

29

In general, the Mail Shield works on network level - so the quarantined email cannot be put “back” so that the email client would receive it (again). It may be different in case of Outlook plugin, but it’s still not possible to put the mail back into the mailbox.
So, the “Restore” option won’t work.

You can try to “Extract” option though - it should copy the quarantined file into the folder of your choice. Now I’m not sure what file exactly it’s gonna be - if it’s the actual email (body and the rest), try renaming the file to .eml extension - maybe the email client would be able to open it then?

30

Hi Igor. Thanks for the tip. I wasn’t able to read the extracted file in either ‘Notepad’ or ‘Word Pad’ nor by adding the extension of .eml to the file, but, it does open perfectly in MS Word, so this does get around the problem of not being able to restore back into Outlook. So anyone else out there reading this who has the same issue and wants to read their email that’s in Quarantine, just extract the file and add the extension .doc or .docx and the file opens and is perfectly readable in MS Word.

31

I’ve suddenly started having a huge amount of trouble in the last few days. The mail shield is triggering hundreds of times an hour, with a good many of these false alerts being to Wayfair and B&H emails. I can’t move the alert box, and it triggers do often I can’t do anything on my computer as long as Thunderbird is running. I’ve now started unsubcribing from multiple lists.

When that’s compounded with the increasing number of Avast nags to upgrade, my take is that the best solution is to scrape this barnacle off the boat and go with a different product.

32

Hi - Just an update - after sending a sample email in question from quarantine, Avast generously got back to say, “Our virus specialists have been working on this problem and it has been resolved. Detection should not be appearing anymore.”