how to I find the Private/VAR/folders

First, there is no reason to ever install or run any 3rd party "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus, VPN or security apps on your Mac.  This documents describe what you need to know and do in order to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community and Recognize and avoid phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support.  

There are no known viruses, i.e. self propagating, for Macs.  There are, however, adware and malware which require the user to install although unwittingly most of the time thru sneaky links, etc.   

Anti Virus developers try to group all types as viruses into their ad campaigns of fear.  They do a poor job of the detecting and isolating the adware and malware.  Since there are no viruses these apps use up a lot of system resources searching for what is non-existent and adversely affect system and app performance.

There is one app, Malwarebytes, which was developed by a long time contributor to these forums and a highly respected member of the computer security community, that is designed solely to seek out adware and known malware and remove it.  The free version is more than adequate for most users.  

Uninstall Sophos according to the develop's instructions. The A/V apps are prone to false positives so I wouldn't rely on them at all.

jbingle wrote:

Do you feel anti-virus software isn't needed for Macbooks?

Antivirus apps are unnecessary and actually a detriment.

See…

Effective defenses against malware and ot… - Apple Community

Recognize and avoid phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support

In the off chance there is actually something there, while in the Finder, press command shift G, paste /private/var/folders into the window that opens and press return.

I agree you should uninstall Sophos.

The Premium paid version is to allow real time scanning of the system which is not necessary and possibly automatic updates. The only time you need to scan your Mac is when you believe you have accidentally been infected with malware which should be extremely rare if you practice safe computing habits which @Old Toad mentioned with their previous links. Once you scan the system, you really don't need to have MalwareBytes anymore so just go to the MalwareBytes' "Help" menu and select the "Uninstall" option (I believe that is how it can be uninstalled).

Even though MalwareBytes is less intrusive than other anti-virus apps, it still installs a low level component into macOS which will interfere with the normal operation of macOS to some extent. For system stability & reliability, it is best practice to minimize apps which do this....and a malware scanning app is not something that is needed to be running 24/7.

I don't even recommend any third party anti-virus apps when using Windows either since many of them tend to collect & sell personal information, have advertising, and have been known to have vulnerabilities. Windows' built-in Defender anti-virus (or whatever they call it today) is good enough for most people these days and is the least intrusive on Windows.

As the others have mentioned, the same is true for macOS which has its own built-in malware protection tools and generally better security than Windows although Windows has improved over the years.

Besides every tool will have stuff which gets past it since the whole security field is a game of whack-a-mole. Besides relying on the default built-in security of the OS, the user just needs to do their own part by practicing safe computing habits such as those mentioned in the links provided by @dialabrain.

You should be able to download the free version of Malwarebytes. Just ignore the request to upgrade to Premium.

Try this link, click here, that's on this page: https://www.malwarebytes.com/mac-download

When you launch Malwarebytes the first time just ignore the Buy Now and click on Scan. Do it each time you have need to run it:

Delete Sophos instead. All it will ever do is thrill you with false positives.

I forgot to mention: run the free version of Malwarebytes. If it doesn't find anything ignore what Sophos found and remove Sophos.