system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What exactly is happening behind the scenes when an Antivirus puts something under quarantine?

How does it lock it down, how does it contain the virus ?
gpt
A computer virus isn't dangerous unless executed. For most viruses, having dozens of them in your desktop would be completely fine *unless you click on them* or something else executes it. So a virus has to somehow trick you or your computer into executing it, and then it has to keep getting executed each time the computer reboots, e.g. because they're in the autorun folder.

So just moving them to a separate folder where no one will accidentally click on them is usually all it takes.

However, for some files, things trying to automatically look at them may accidentally execute them. To prevent that, antivirus software often encrypts the files (in a weak way) when moving them to the quarantine folder. That keeps other things from looking at them.