Is it safe to open a message in the “avast! Junk” folder (because I suspect I might actually want it) and it turns out to be infected after all, does the fact of it being in the Junk folder isolate potential risks?
No. avast moves to Chest/delete the infected files.
The junk folder is used for spam (clean messages but spam).
Where do I find “Chest/delete”? I paid for the full version
Left click the “a” orange icon.
Maintenance
Chest
How do I know to move a message to the Virus Chest, or does that happen automatically? I haven’t been attacked; I just decided I ought to know. would a scan, for instance, identify which messages are risky?
In the expert settings for some of the shields, is a sub-section called “actions”, this will determine what auto actions you want to take based on detection type (Virus, PuP, Susp.). You can chose 3 auto-actions that Avast! will attempt to execute upon a detection, like [1st Move to Chest, 2nd Repair, 3rd Delete] or whatever combination of 3 you can think of from a drop-down menu.
Total manual actions would be setting these to “Ask”
Move to Chest is the strongly recommended first action. In the event of a false positive, you do not want to delete a critical system file.