Avast quarantines threats but Malwarebytes does not recognize them

[jjocarbone]

I am running a free version of AVG on Macbook Pro OS Ventura 13.2.1  It quarantines files that seem to be threats but MWB does not do the same. Are these really threats and MWB is not seeing them?

Thank you

[alvarnell]

From the file name and it's original location i would guess it to be an PDF phishing attempt attached to an email, probably in your spam folder, so unless you have a bitcoin account and fall for the phish it was never a threat to you.

Scanning email and moving it to quarantine will likely corrupt your email database, which could prevent you from accessing important messages, so it's usually a bad idea for malware utilities to do such.

[jjocarbone]

Thank you for the explanation.  Do you think it a good idea to upgrade AVG, or am I fully protected with the licensed MB protection.

[alvarnell]

I must admit up front that I'm not personally familiar with AVG or it's twin Avast, but note that recent reviews appears to hold it in high regard for both malware identification overall and phishing in particular. In years past I've noted that they are equally famous for the number of False Positives they report.

I don't have a problem with having multiple anti-malware utilities installed and do so myself (for testing purposes) as long as only one of them is configured to run in real-time/on-access mode. Doing so will prevent major slowdowns on your Mac caused by more than one app fighting over who gets to scan a new/revised/in-use file first.

[jjocarbone]

Thank you for this information.