How to exclude folders from real time scan?

[noctifer]

Yes, speaking as a developer having to troubleshoot deleted files is slower then running things with real time scanning turned on.

And wow this whole response thread... My mother is elderly. She needs a computer that is stupid simple, and McAfee is certainly both. I will keep the subscription for her computer. For my own house's computers that I can maintain more easily in-person? I've had McAfee for.. 15+ years now and I've put up with a lot of this crap - from it trying to constantly force me to switch to yahoo, to paying for something where I can get a superior anti-virus solution for free / cheap, to having to keep up with excluded folders, to having to balance it out because this software is too dumb to play well with most other software. This though? Realizing it had erased multiple executables off my computer without asking because it had at some point 'updated' to ignoring my settings of ignoring dev folders? And finding out this is a 'feature'??

Screw this, I can do better for my home network. I'll look into upgrading all my computers to Avast this weekend and turning off auto-renew here (or just canceling if McAfee added some other 'feature' to keep me from turning off auto-renew). And if I discover the new tools are easy enough to manage via vpn to my mom's home I'll clean-slate this whole mess

[sean5900xt]

"This was why Mcafee excluded whole folders from the exclusion list.

"Too risky to exclude an entire folder. Malware can spot an excluded folder and dump its contents in there. "

So dose McAfee make it possible for other programs to see its settings, such as excluded files? If so that's some pretty bad design. I got a special offer of 1 year of live safe on unlimited PC's for $20 with my Note 20 Ultra 5G.

I took advantage of the offer, and installed Live Safe on my gaming PC. I start looking in the settings for exclusions, and only see a way to exclude files. Find out that the ability to exclude folders STILL hasn't been added (you find posts going back to at least 2012 of people asking for this).

So I uninstalled and canceled the auto renew. My sub dose not run out until 7/8/2022 but I've no desire to install McAfee again knowing this still isn't added.

I don't buy the whole "we aren't adding it because it's to big of a security risk" line. Like I said are you saying that another piece of software such as malware can just look at McAfee's settings like its exclusions?

Windows Security (what used to be called Defender), has had the ability to add not only files, and folders to the exclusion list, but even entire drives.

I have one drive I keep on the exclusion list because it contains some things that are likely to cause a false positive. Such as game trainers (apps for cheating in single player games / modes). All the trainers come from one site that is well known, been around a long time, and requires either a sub or the purchase of a lifetime membership.

But due to the way trainers have to operate to work, by modifying the memory values of another app, I know it's likely to cause a AV to perform a false flag on the trainer just from the security software seeing the way the trainer is behaving. So I just have the drive in my exclusion list in Microsoft Security.

I run Hitman Pro every once in a while to get a second opinion scan just to be safe. I genuinely can't remember the last time I've ever had any malware/viruses/spyware etc. So obviously being able to add folders or even entire drives as exclusions isn't a problem for MS Security, and it's a feature I'm 99 percent sure all the other well known AV/Security programs offer.

Funny that McAfee has had time to go through like 3+ complete UI re designs of their app/apps in just the past few years, but just hasn't been able to get this feature added.