Can't add exclusions

[jocharhum]

I'm STILL having a hard time figuring this out. I can't add exceptions even under Detection History. I use another anti-virus on my Mac, and need to add it as an exception. Help?

[exile360]

Greetings,

This is the area for support for the Windows version.  The area for the Mac version can be found here.  In the meantime, I checked all of the support articles for the Mac version, including the Malwarebytes for Mac guide v4 and I could not locate any area or function for adding exclusions.

That said, I would not recommend running 2 AVs on your Mac.  If you already have a different AV that you prefer, stick with it and remove Malwarebytes, or deactivate the free trial in Malwarebytes if you wish to continue using it in free mode as a second opinion scanner.

I hope this helps.

Edited August 27, 2020 by exile360
Post was moved to the correct section of the forums.

[treed]

There is not currently a way to add exclusions in Malwarebytes for Mac. However, it's very likely that the detection of the other software you're running is not an accident. There are a number of junk, fake, or otherwise unwanted antivirus programs that we detect, and I'm not aware of any current false positives of any kind, much less involving legitimate antivirus software. What is the software that you are trying to exclude from detection?

[exile360]

@jocharhum, are you still with us?  If you believe that the detection of your AV is a false positive, please report it so that the Research team may correct the issue and if you let us know what AV it is you are trying to use alongside Malwarebytes we can provide info on why it is being detected so that you may decide what actions would be best to protect your system and your data.

Thanks

[zofodraziw]

This is absolutely a feature I am interested in. Some of my removable drives are sizable and not enterprise-grade drives, and I really want to eliminate certain volumes to avoid thrashing them on a daily basis to wear them out prematurely. Avast free version for Mac supports this, and I'm strongly considering switching back (though I've paid for a year of Malwarebytes, unfortunately) until this feature is available. Losing a drive and having to restore from backups--potentially losing incremental data--is also a security risk.

What I would like to see in a paid product is the ability to establish multiple scan profiles--say daily for my primary volumes, and perhaps weekly for those lower-grade archival volumes.

[Porthos]

7 minutes ago, zofodraziw said:

Some of my removable drives are sizable and not enterprise-grade drives, and I really want to eliminate certain volumes to avoid thrashing them on a daily basis to wear them out prematurely.

If the mac version is anything like the Windows version, It does not automatically scan any external drives.

[zofodraziw]

24 minutes ago, Porthos said:

If the mac version is anything like the Windows version, It does not automatically scan any external drives.

Interesting. Thanks for the info, @Porthos. Since there are no toggles/controls, it's not obvious what it's scanning vs not. :)

 

I located a couple other threads referencing backups, but there's not a lot of definitive info other than Time Machine / backup volumes are bad to scan (very true!) and thus aren't. Avast auto-detects Time Machine volumes and excludes them--they're grayed / can't be toggled--but all other removables are toggle-able:

https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/246331-scanning-external-hard-drive/

https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/223701-scanning-external-hard-drives/

 

Right-clicking my removable volumes doesn't show scan as an available action, so it's looking more like scanning removable volumes isn't supported at all (also not what I want).

 

Just for clarity, the volumes I'm referencing are USB-connected DAS, and stay connected permanently; there's extremely low risk of being disconnected mid-scan.

[alvarnell]

@Porthos is correct that external drives are never scanned. The Malwarebytes architecture only scans locations where current malware files are known to exist and the structure of an external disk would likely not be organized in a standard manner, so there wouldn't be any means of knowing where to look. Anything copied or installed from an external disk to the boot drive would almost certainly be caught by the Real-Time Malware protection feature or the next scheduled/manual scan.