Thanks igor, that’s what I needed to know about the process being under the “system account”. so now I see it; “avast.setup *32”, with that I understand why my emails are being scanned so slowly and why some of my emails have “timed out” errors during the email scan by PopPeeper. Once the update is finished I’ll get a “clean” email scan.
thanks again.
P. S. Yep, once the Avast “update information” message popped up no more “avast.setup *32” process… 
Update: After the Avast update finished my mail scan finished really quick, in 22 minutes for all 17 accounts, with zero errors
instead of taking well over an hour with multiple errors during the Avast update :'(.