Malware: The Difference Between Quarantine and Delete
Just wanted to share a nifty information I found while trying to decide whether I should quarantine or delete malwares from my computer today. Apparently, the idea of having the "quarantine" option when an antivirus detects an infected file is to avoid false positives. If by chance the antivirus software wrongly flags a file as "bad" when the file is actually something you need, like a critical program (for example Explorer.exe in Windows) such that deleting it might cause the computer to stop working, quarantine allows it to simply restore it back.Anything in quarantine is safely segregated from the rest of your computer, it cannot run from there, so it can do no harm. So the general advice is to put the infected files in quarantine for a while you go about your normal computer activities. If everything continues to run properly after a reasonable period of time (say, about a week or two), then delete the files in quarantine permanently.
Be safe and always quarantine first!
