Best Antivirus settings

[spyguy]

I'm making this thread to see what the safest and most effective settings for my antivirus are. Of the available options there is fix automatically, move to quarantine, repair, and delete. And then under processing of infected archives there is try to remove only the infected file from the archive if it fails do nothing. Try to remove the infected file from the archive if it fails delete whole archive. And then just delete whole archive. Apologies I know that's a mess to read. Also I have AVG free if that's important

 

[kasiourasg]

Deleting a threat is often the most effective thing as it completely gets rid of it. The downside of that is that security programs often detect false positives.

Which means that your Antivirus might detect a legitimate program as a virus and remove it without you realizing anything until it's too late.

Quarantine is often the second best choice as it renders the suspected program useless until you take action and decide what to do with it.

But, in overall, deleting is without a doubt the safest way of handling threats!

 

[Avast-Team]

Really good question! Honestly, it depends on your comfort level and the option you would prefer.

First, "Fix automatically" is generally the all around most popular option, as Avast/AVG can remove/heal the threat in the least destructive manner and make the smartest decision based on what the threat is. Move to quarantine is a good option if you would like to maintain a record of what the threat was or observe it safely later (there is no danger in moving it to quarantine, hence why it's called quarantine Delete is destructive, but you'll be certain whatever was infected is gone.

You can also set Avast/AVG to perform actions in stages, e.g. "Ask" then "Fix automatically" if no response from the user was received.

As for archives, those options are similar -- selecting delete whole archive is the most destructive (in the event that the program could remove just the infected file from the archive)

I hope that helps and thanks for using AVG!