By default, Sophos
Anti-Virus for UNIX/Linux scans items pointed to by symbolic links. This action can be enabled or disabled with the
--follow-symlinks and
--no-follow-symlinks options.
To avoid scanning items more than once, use the --backtrack-protection option. This option prevents symlinks being followed more than once when the target is a directory that has already been scanned. However, symlinks to regular files will still be followed more than once.
NOTE: The above options are applicable to on-demand scans executed with sweep (SAV4) or savscan (SAV7/9)