This evening when I opened Thunderbird, I heard the Avast threat warning sound and received a a notification that a threat was detected. When I opened the Avast GUI, I was able to see details of the notification (i.e. the headings of the blocked email which revealed enough information to indicate it was a genuine threat so well done Avast). However when I opened the Virus Chest, it was empty.
I ran a Smart Scan which reported my system was clean. Does the fact that there was nothing in the Virus Chest mean that sometimes Avast deletes threats immediately rather than put them in the Virus Chest?
The red dot on the Notification Area icon and on the bell notification icon in the Avast GUI have both gone although the notification details still remain in the notifications list in the GUI. Previously when threats have been detected, they have ended up in the Virus Chest and I have deleted them and then deleted the relevant notification message. As, this time, nothing was placed in the Virus Chest, is it ok to delete the message?
Check mail shield settings > action to take when detecting
Hi Pondus,
Thanks for your quick reply, the link you gave and your advice. I’ve not changed my settings since I first installed Avast similar threats have always been placed in the Virus Chest. I get the occasional SPAM emails which my filtering system is very good at diverting and no doubt would have filtered this threat but for the efficiency of Avast. From the headings I saw in the Avast notification folder this threat was within a false invoice scam. I checked my Mail Shield settings, as you recommended and the action setting is to attempt a repair first and if that does not work, to move the threat to the Virus Chest. However this email, as far as I can see, has been completely deleted. I can find no trace of it and it certainly is not in the Virus Chest. I am quite happy that it has been deleted of course, I would have deleted from the Virus Chest immediately anyway but I am puzzled by its disappearance with my Mail Shield settings as they are.
Since running the smart scan, I have also run a full system scan and my system is again reported as clean. Is it therefore ok to delete the record in the notification section?