Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: REDACTED on April 26, 2018, 05:17:39 PM
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Recently (over 2 weeks now) many people (myself included: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=218267.0) had the issue that Avast! deleted Mails stored in Thunderbird.
It mostly detects Phishing, even if false positive, and then deletes the whole file that contains the mail.
There are several bugs here, the most critical might be that Avast! deletes the file completely without asking and with no option to restore it. (Move to Chest fails with "Error 112 in s_NewFile"
and "Error 112 in chestAddFileRpc").
Reporting any bug to Avast! is futile, you are simply ignored. I tried mailing 2 staff contacts, submitting in false positive, and contacting a guy that works for Avast in forums. I got absolute ZERO response.
The community isnt much help either, mostly blaming the user for not shifting data away from the deleted file and suggesting what you could do in the future, ignoring the bugs in Avast. I mean they cant help because they have no contact to the devs, as the company outsources the support to the community.
This ignorance led to me uninstalling Avast! after over 10 years. The company doesnt care if its product is flawed and they dont care if you loose data. So I dont see any value in keeping it on my system.
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1. AV programs cannot snip infected data from your inbox. It can delete or move the whole file.
2. It's always a good idea to let not noch mails in the inbox.
3. In your case I would check why avast cannot move files to the virus chest.
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@stibi: I dont think TB is to blame but Avast!. Avast! has the ability to repair problems. Since it detects phishing in the emails (which are plain text), it should be able to remove the phishing link or the single mail containing the phish. If malicious code attaches to system files, Avast! would remove it from the infected file. Otherwise it would render your OS useless.
AV is supposed to protect you, not to cripple you on suspicions.
To why Avast! cant move the files, I posted the error codes. What those really mean I dont know and no dev has come to answer.
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Dev-Info: The underlying detection (common for all 3 cases) has been updated yesterday so that it shouldn't happen on Thunderbird mailboxes anymore, and I'll try to prevent their removal in a generic way in the next few days.
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Avast! has the ability to repair problems... Avast! would remove it from the infected file.
That's a misunderstanding. AV programs cannot remove parts of an infected file, as they do not know the structure of files. E.g. where a specific mail in your inbox begins and where it ends.