Why is quarantine better than deleting?

Question

Why is recommended to quarantine than to delete a virus. This morning I deleted several viruses from my quarantine list... Is this bad? Why is quarantining more safe?

Answer 1

A file that is in quarantine can easily be replaced if needed.

Virus and other malware removal is somewhat of an inexact science. Mistakes can and do happen. Often. False-positive detections happen more often then the anti-malware industry cares to admit. It's their dirty little secret.

Needed system files can be mistakenly flagged as malware. Quarantining allows a way to undo any incorrect file deletions, easily, if it ever becomes necessary.  When the anti-virus vendor finds their mistake and corrects their signature definitions, for you, the user, it is too late. The needed file has already been permanently deleted. And then it's, "tough luck, Charlie".



A file in quarantine is totally safe. It can do no harm.

You should quarantine everything for a month or so, then if all is OK with your computer and all of your programs, then you can delete.

Answer 2

It only quarantines first because it may be infecting a system file or a file nessecary to run a program. If it can be cleaned then it would be better than deleting it due to something not being able to run without it. However, most of the time it is safe to delete the file infected. Just make sure it does not say .dll or .ini or some other system extension. If it does then google the file and find out what it is for so at least you know what you need to reinstall if it must be deleted

Answer 3

This is because quarantined viruses cannot do any damage to your pc and you can decide what to do with them at a  later stage. Maybe the virus-file is an important piece of document which was infected by a different virus and sometimes files can be healed (get the virus removed) and so be usable again.