Quarantine viruses - what does that mean?

If your anti-virus software finds viruses or other malware, you can often quarantine the malware. We show you what that means and what you have to watch out for.

Virus found: delete or quarantined?

• If a virus or other malicious file is detected by your anti-virus program, you can usually delete the file directly. This will remove the pest and hopefully your system will be clean again.
• However, sometimes the virus scan is a bit too careful and detects a virus, even though the file is quite harmless or even absolutely necessary. A striking structure of the file is enough to be considered dangerous. There is quarantine for such files.

Move virus to quarantine: this happens

• If the name and file path of the virus do not tell you anything, you cannot be sure yourself whether it is really a virus. If you are not an expert in the field, you should always have finds moved to quarantine.
• Quarantine is a secure area that is created and controlled by your anti-virus software. The alleged virus is moved to quarantine, but cannot do any harm from there because the file is no longer granted any rights. The file is virtually in a virtual prison.

Quarantined viruses: when to delete or release?

• From now on you are the administrator of the virtual prison. You can delete the file at any time, but you can also release it again. The latter should only happen if it turns out that the file was necessary for Windows or another program.
• Since the potential viruses in quarantine cannot do any damage, at best you should never delete the finds. If there are no noticeable impairments after several days and weeks, you can delete the file without any major concerns.

Quarantined virus: Check the authenticity of the danger

• If you want to be on the safe side, take a look at the exact report. There you will find both the file name and its location. If you can't do anything with the information yourself, use a search engine like Google.
• Alternatively, you can also contact the experts in the CHIP forum. It is best to publish the complete report of your anti-virus software there. You should be quickly helped with such a problem.
• If you want to be on the safe side, you can check your computer with independent software. The free virus scanner Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is extremely reliable in both the detection and removal of viruses.

A sandbox works similarly to a quarantine. In the next practical tip, we will show you what exactly a sandbox is.