What to do when a Threat Found alert is displayed

As a general example of how infiltrations or threats are handled by ESET Cyber Security, suppose that an infiltration is detected by the real-time file system monitor using the default cleaning level. Real-time protection tries to clean or delete the file. If the threat found could not be cleaned automatically or the cleaning level is predefined as No cleaning, you are prompted to select an option in an alert window. The Threat Found alert window can also show up as a result of an On-demand computer scan.

Options offered in the Threat Found alert

Usually, the options Clean, Delete, and No action are available. Selecting No action is not recommended, because infected files are left in the infected state. This option is intended for when you are sure that a file is harmless and has been detected by mistake.

What does it mean to clean the file

Apply cleaning if a file is attacked by a virus that has attached malicious code to it. If this is the case, first try to clean the infected file to restore it to its original state. If the file consists exclusively of malicious code, it will be deleted.