Author Topic: How to delete or move to quarantine infected files in time machine backups?  (Read 1611 times)

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Offline alfric

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Avast found a number of infected files in time machine backups (taking several days...), apparently mostly in saved mail folders such as SPAM or TRASH. Avast seem not to be able to solve the issue, probably because the time machine files are somehow protected.
Is there any method to get rid of these files, beside deleting the entire time machine backup? Or should I just ignore them, as they are anyway in folders which I will not use after a potential restoration from the backup?

Offline ondrej.kolacek

  • Avast team
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Hello,

There is nothing that can be done with time machine backups; this is why Avast by default skips scanning such backups. Please note that File Shield still protects you from accidentally accessing such files, so their presence is not a security risk.

The fact that these issues started to appear for you is probably due to a hotfix of an issue with some users not being able to run a scan, which we have rolled out recently. Unfortunately the fix was not 100% correct and in some cases it causes Time Machine detection to not work properly. Our QA have already caught the issue and it will be fixed in the next version of Avast (14.4).

We apologise for scaring you and other users, and for not catching this issue before releasing it.

Kind regards,
Ondrej Kolacek
« Last Edit: March 06, 2020, 11:50:13 AM by ondrej.kolacek »