I see many references to repairing a virus, putting it in the chest or deleting it. Except for those circumstances where there is great value attached to the offening email, why would you do anything other than delete it right away and get it off your system?
Obviously, some people have email of such a nature that they will take some risk to make sure they get it. In my case, Avast picked up two cases of netsky virus. Both purported to be undeliverable email. One address appeared to be a returned message that I had sent to a web site to tell them that their site wasn’t working. The other address, that was supposed to be a destination that I couldn’t reach, was one that I had never heard of but as a web hosting business might actually have been the actual location of the site that wasn’t working. At any rate, neither message had any value for me so I immediately selected Avast’s delete option.
Avast reported that the virus was successfully deleted. I assumed that the whole message had been deleted but this was not the case. The postmaster’s “undelivered mail” messages were still there complete with an attachment which I most assuredly did not open. I immediately instructed Eudora to delete both messages entirely.
I choose to have avast instantly delete messages with a virus as I assume that is the absolute safest method of dealing with them. I am indifferent to any substantive content that may be lost. Am I correct in doing this?
I must say that once I figured out how get Avast operational I find it very impressive!!
This is strange, avast! detect a virus, you chose delete it and it was not deleted… Are you sure that the ‘infected’ attachment file, beside the others (if any) was not deleted?
I do the same. You must be using the Pro version (or you wouldn’t be able to automatically delete the infected messages). Is this that you mean with ‘instantly’ or you have to click the buttom ‘delete’?
The choice to Delete, Repair, or Move is provided so that the user can pick whichever course of action suits them.
I agree with you that if a file is identified as a virus, deleting is the safest course of action. However, the Move option allows a user to safetly isolate the “file” until it can be determined if the “infection” warrants deletionl. On the other hand, some files can be “repaired” by Avast which causes the least bit of trouble and the best course of action overall.
Remember that even though Avast is the best AV as far as I am concerned, you must aire on the side of caution until a “virus infected file” can be determined to be just that and not a false positive.
Good luck and thanks for joining the forum,
Techie101
I am not using the pro version although I think I will. I hesitate to mess with a program that is funtioning. More than once I have disabled key programs by upgrading to the pro version.
When I say that I have Avast instantly delete messages that are apparently virus infected I mean that I immediately select the delete option from the three that are presented to me.
My concern about which is the best choice in responding to viruses captured by Avast is related to the hazards of improper deletion of virii. Many are coded to wreak havoc when they are subjected to an attempt to delete. One knowledgeable poster put the delete option as the last of preferred actions when using Avast to handle a virus.
Since my email is of importance only to me I automatically want to delete any suspect message entirely from my computer. In the case of the two netsky loaded messages that I received I just assumed that clicking on Avast’s delete option would delete the message. I don’t know for sure what happened but the message was still there complete with attachment. Of course, if I had chosen to open the messages with their attachments they may well have been completely empty of content or at least free of a virus.
My question really related to being assured that all other things being equal the safest way for Avast to handle a virus is to select the delete option.
There have been the very rare occassion where a false positive occurs. Moving files to the chest makes it easier to move the file(s) back to the original location. If deleted, the file is gone.
Thank you for your replies. The possibility of false positives hadn’t occured to me as a reason for quarantining rather than just deleting.
That is a reason that is so obvious that I feel embarrassed to need to have it pointed out to me. :-[
Northernguy, you do not have to be embarassed… I agree with you and if this is your ‘need’, no reason to not post it here.
But, this behavior is only possible in the Pro version, which I do recommend in your case
