In the Avast User Manual in the chapter covering Exclusions it notes the following:
“To speed up processing. If you have a folder on your hard disk that contains images only, for example, you can exclude it from testing by adding it to the exclusions list, which will reduce the time spent on scanning.”
Now I have to confess that I was not aware that image files would not be able to contain viruses (as the above implies). Is this actually the case? And would it be a recommended action to exclude all digital photography, videos, etc. to save scan time?
Not all image files are unable to contain viruses, jpg files can be exploited, but video files, .wma tend to be OK (some of the problems are that the media players are the exploited link).
So rather than do anything like that I feel the scan Sensitivity is the way to go, see image extract of the ‘old’ help file, Simple User Interface, Working with the Simple User Interface, so where the Standard sensitivity mentions that only dangerous files would be scanned.
To my thinking that means that non-dangerous files like some media files wouldn’t be scanned ;D If you get my way of thinking you don’t need exclusions to achieve what you suggest.
Thanks for all of those replies. Very enlightening. It really would be wise to get that line out of the manual. If it is in the help file as well, then that too.
I remember my very first problem with avast! was two years ago in connection with a false positive on .jpg files.
I did once when we were looking at the pre-release versions before they were converted to PDFs and put on the web.
Unfortunately of all the people that looked at the pre-release version (and it has been in the help file for much longer), no one though of it as a problem ;D
