(I started a separate thread about this last night when I wasn't sure what had happened, but I'm mentioning this here as it may be some specific bug to do with this new release, as it happened during a scheduled Smart Scan.)
I seemed to run into a bug in the Smart Scan - or at least the scheduled Smart Scan - last night; and trying to look into it raised a couple of other issues.
My first scheduled Smart Scan happened, which I was not expecting to find anything as a bunch of manual Smart Scans and all the other types of scans since installing Avast (premier) a couple of weeks ago haven't found anything. To my surprise, at the end of the Advanced Issues phase I got a warning page with a line about having found an 'open door' to 'more advanced threats'. BUT underneath that, where it should have told me what the issue was, there was absolutely nothing, just the Resolve and Ignore buttons at the bottom. I hit Resolve, hoping it would tell me what it had done to what, but got nothing other than an assurance my laptop was now fine.
Later I triggered another Smart Scan manually, REALLY not expecting it to find anything else, just to see if I hadn't been noticing any lines coming up during the Advanced Issues saying what it was looking at while scanning (there are no such lines, and I still don't know exactly what the Advanced Issues part of a Smart Scan does). To my much greater surprise I got the warning result page about the 'open door' to 'advanced threats' again ... but this time it DID have a box underneath specifying exactly what it was worried about - a file it was classifying as 'sensitive data' that wasn't being protected. It still didn't actually say what hitting Resolve would do, but at least it actually did the most obvious guess and added that file to the protected document list of the Sensitive Data Shield.
Now, it seems clear to me that what happened with the scheduled Smart Scan hit a bug. However, it could be one of two bugs and I have no way of knowing which. Either (a) the scheduled Smart Scan found the same problem as the later manual scan - the unprotected sensitive data file - but hit a bug maybe specific to that issue type, and maybe specific to only when the scan is scheduled, that prevented it displaying the specific problem and also prevented it from fixing it; or (b) the scheduled Smart Scan actually found a different problem to the one found by the later manual smart scan, with a bug specific to THAT kind of problem that prevented it showing the result for that class of problem (but maybe let it fix it).
So there was a bug. But i can't nail down more accurately what kind it was as there is no report file to look in.
Which brings me to the other issues raised by this:
1) Only the Virus & Malware part of a Smart Scan has an option to have it generate a report. There's no option to have reports for the other phases of the Smart Scan like the Advanced Issue phase. Which leaves incidents like this mysterious, and nailing down bugs impossible. ALL phases of Smart Scans (and any other scanning that lacks such an option) should have the option to produce report files.
2) While trying to understand what was going on, I could find nothing saying exactly what is included in the 'Advanced Issues' phase of a Smart Scan. Please document it.
3) Also while investigating this I got into the online Help ... and found myself reading pages e.g. about Smart Scan settings that referred to settings and pages of settings that didn't appear to exist in the program. It was only after awhile that I remembered the 'old settings' hidden away as a small link at the bottom of Settings>General>Troubleshooting. I then saw that the pages I was reading in the online Help were correct but all about the OLD settings. The online Help pages REALLY need updating to refer to the current default UI where possible; and to state very obviously at the top of a page that it is about a page in the old settings where (like with the Smart Scan settings) it isn't in the new settings UI, along with the instructions to find them for those who don't know - or, like me, don't remember - the Old Settings are there.
4) I'm just puzzled by the Smart Scan finding that unprotected 'sensitive data' file. I ran the scan for sensitive data files on the Sensitive Data Shield page after fully activating Avast after I bought the Premier license last week; it ran for quite awhile - MUCH longer than the entire Smart Scan, never mind just the Advanced Issues part of the Smart Scan - and found a few files which I duly set to be protected. I've done a bunch of (manually activated) Smart Scans since, which detected nothing. Then suddenly the Smart Scan finds this one file, which has been there for years, never mind when I did the sensitive data scan and all the time since. Very ... odd.
Anyway, there need to be options for all scans, including all phases of Smart Scans, to generate reports; a list of what is actually included in 'Advanced Issues' Smart scans; much updating of the online Help to reflect the new UI and that some things are only in the 'old settings'; and there's some kind of bug affecting at least scheduled Smart Scans blocking it from reporting what the actual problem is in at least some circumstances I can't nail down because of the lack of report files.
Not as helpful a bug report as I like to give ... but if you Avast tech guys want better, add those scan report options, please.
