Ransomware Protection, General Question(s)

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hello

I would like to know how this is working exactly… at the free version and if I purchase it.

In first place I assumed Avast would control the access of files in protected folders, in general. But it looks that Avast is just controlling if apps can change or delete protected files. It is possible for “unknown” apps to open / read those files… I was testing it with simple PDFs… the reader can read the PDFs and show the contents as normal… and Avast brings a popup about this access a few seconds later.

1) This is my first question: Avast Free AV will prevent apps from changing or deleting protected files… but they are allowed to read the files? Is this right?

What about the paid version?!

There is this “gift” in main window… with a 67% discount. There Avast shows that the paid version will “protect your personal files”… while the free version cannot do that.

2) My second question is: What is this protection doing? Has this something to do with the ransomware protection from question 1 ? Will apps be prevented from reading protected files?

2

Ok, I found out…

… paid version do the same things as the free version, both let all apps read all files

… the document protection from paid version… is an automatic thing… which scans all folders for pre-defined file types. And we can add some additional files ( not folders, and not file types ). But I was able to open such files with apps which are not whitelisted.

… last but not least… I was adding a pdf reader app to the blocked apps. And this app was still able to read protected files. But it was not able to change the file.

The ransomware protection seems to be working as intended. But the paid document protection ( which should protect documents with sensible data, such as bank data, passwords, IDs and so on ) is not working, because blacklisted apps can still open and read protected files.

Somehow curious