Author Topic: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring  (Read 5625 times)

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Offline dloch

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I have recently been getting emails whereby a Threat notification comes up and the email is sent to quarantine and yet these emails are legitimate and from expected sources, one such being shopper@Worldpay.com.  When I go into Quarantine to unblock it will not let me recover it, comes up with the erorr 'Whoops, error occured. This file cannot be restored. Close'  This is also happening to a friend of mine that uses Avast on my recommendation.  Can anyone explain how I can retrieve these emails.  I've also tried a reinstall of Avast but same happens when trying to recover quarantined emails.  Avast ver  21.5.2470 (build 21.5.6354.680) 

Offline brwntree

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #1 on: July 20, 2021, 05:06:51 AM »
Same thing is happening to me and I can't even read the email in question in thunderbird anymore - it gets marked as *virus* in the subject and nothing of the email shows in the body.  Can't restore & exception it either.  This is a real show stopper for Avast.  If i uninstall avast and put a diff A/V software are my emails lost forever?  I just made a purchase online and the confirmation email came in and got sent to quarantine and won't restore so this is def a false positive.  One other thing - AOL recently did something on their email servers which cause thunderbird to reload all emails from server back onto client on my desktop.  While these were reloading several got sent to quarantine even though they had been their from before without issue in the past.   Can anyone help with this b/c it is apparently happening to others too.  At this point a fix doesn't matter unless it's fool-proof.  Instead I wanna recover my emails and uninstall Avast b/c this is intolerable (never had a prob like this with any other A/V software (mostly used avg).  There has to be some override mechanism to restore and exception these false positive emails getting quarantined.  Also is there some way to tell Avast to not scan thunderbird?!?  TIA

Offline brwntree

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #2 on: July 20, 2021, 05:09:19 AM »
Also same ver here = Avast ver  21.5.2470 (build 21.5.6354.680) 

Offline brwntree

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #3 on: July 20, 2021, 10:47:02 PM »
Can anyone from AVAST help with this!! How can we get the attention of AVAST tech support to assist with this?  Please! TIA

Offline Pondus

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #4 on: July 20, 2021, 10:58:36 PM »
Quote
Also is there some way to tell Avast to not scan thunderbird?!? 
Turn off mail shield i guess?   

Scroll down to Manage individual shield settings and select Mail shield
https://support.avast.com/en-eu/article/Antivirus-shield-settings/


« Last Edit: July 20, 2021, 11:07:22 PM by Pondus »

Offline brwntree

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #5 on: July 21, 2021, 05:25:23 AM »
yes, and thanks!  Had already done that so no more emails will get absconded; now to restore my emails.  It might be that I have to remove avast entirely (good riddance) and then maybe delete/remove the emails in the client that got tagged as **VIRUS** in the subject in such away that they don't delete from the imap server and then re-fetch them, somehow lol.  ::)

PS - In all fairness avast has been very good for many yrs here (ymmv) up until this email fiasco has surfaced, but no longer.

Offline dloch

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #6 on: August 01, 2021, 12:22:37 PM »
I've still got this same problem and still unable to recover my quarantined files.  I've tried repairing Avast, un-installing and re-installing Avast and there's also been a new update today 1st Aug 2021, but still the same problem exists with the error 'Whoops, error occurred. This file cannot be restored. Close'  I've sent the file for analysis and explained all this but still no resolution in site. I'm using Win 10 pro. Is there anyone out there that can help, it's very frustrating.

Offline chris..

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #7 on: August 01, 2021, 12:54:10 PM »
Hi,
Quote
Also is there some way to tell Avast to not scan thunderbird?!? 
Turn off mail shield i guess?   
Yes, it's a solution, but the best solution would be for avast to look into the matter because it's not normal for users not to be able to recover quarantined emails, especially when they are false positives.

Offline Asyn

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #8 on: August 01, 2021, 01:08:24 PM »
I've still got this same problem and still unable to recover my quarantined files.  I've tried repairing Avast, un-installing and re-installing Avast and there's also been a new update today 1st Aug 2021, but still the same problem exists with the error 'Whoops, error occurred. This file cannot be restored. Close'  I've sent the file for analysis and explained all this but still no resolution in site. I'm using Win 10 pro. Is there anyone out there that can help, it's very frustrating.
1. Enable debug logging (Menu > Settings > General > Troubleshooting > Enable debug logging) and reproduce the issue.
2. Follow instructions: https://support.avast.com/article/33/ and post the File-ID or name of the Support-File here afterwards.
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Offline DavidR

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #9 on: August 01, 2021, 01:19:06 PM »
Hi,
Quote
Also is there some way to tell Avast to not scan thunderbird?!? 
Turn off mail shield i guess?   
Yes, it's a solution, but the best solution would be for avast to look into the matter because it's not normal for users not to be able to recover quarantined emails, especially when they are false positives.

The problem is that in some email clients, emails aren't stored as individual files within a folder, but as part of a compressed archive format.

For instance the whole folder 'InBox' is just an archive file and not a folder as in the windows explorer sense.  So emails have to be inserted into that compressed archive file/folder.  Now the email client can do that gracefully without issue (as it knows what format, etc.), but another program trying to do that from the outside could well corrupt that archive with the loss of all emails in that archive, not just that email.  It is also my practice not to store lots of emails in InBox for this and other  reasons (system crash, etc.).

The other issue is, because the Mail Shield is acting as a man in the middle, it intercepts the email to scan it before it gets into the email folder/file archive, It can't easily just place it into the InBox folder if it is a compressed archive.

I have my settings, not to take any autonomous action but to Ask (in all shields) and I make the decision what to do.  I also vet my emails (Mail Washer) before allowing them passage to the email client (Thunderbird).
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Offline dloch

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #10 on: August 01, 2021, 04:12:30 PM »
Thanks for the response.  Unfortunately Asyn, the debuggung tool option isn't available in the Free Avast version.

Offline DavidR

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #11 on: August 01, 2021, 05:04:00 PM »
Thanks for the response.  Unfortunately Asyn, the debuggung tool option isn't available in the Free Avast version.

It should be available for all products, as essentially it gathers information on possible bugs and uploads it to avast.  Fixing problems is good for all products, free or paid.

Where do you find it isn't available in the Free Avast version  ?
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Offline dloch

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #12 on: August 01, 2021, 06:13:39 PM »
Asyn, Re the debugging tool, I get as far as enabling  debug logging but when I come to follow the instructions given in the URL link you mention I get as far as Menu>Settings>General>Troubleshooting but there is no entry ‘’Send logs to our support team’, the last entry is ‘Enable debug logging’ which I have  ticked. As an alternative offered by Avast, I’ve down  loaded the Avast Support Tool and run as administrator and generated a support file that has automatically been uploaded to Avast, so I presume Avast now has that result and I have a File ID .  You mentioned posting that ID number on here but is it secure, there seems to be an awful lot of info in the file, or is it only Avast that can access this file?

Offline DavidR

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #13 on: August 01, 2021, 06:20:47 PM »
Posting the ID number, it is secure, what it does is enable the Avast Support team to find your support file and link it to this topic.

Only avast team members have access to the support tickets and support file info.
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Offline dloch

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Re: Avast quarantining legitimate emails with no chance of restoring
« Reply #14 on: August 01, 2021, 06:22:38 PM »
Thanks David,  the Support ID is 4AQGR