How to Add File/Website Exception into Avast Antivirus 2015

In a very rare cases, Avast may detect some files or website pages as a virus, although you know for sure it’s safe. These wrong detection are called false-positives. If such false-positive detection prevails after the virus definitions update, you may want to exclude the detected file or website from the Avast scan.

In this guide you will learn how, but we strongly suggest using exclusions only when you’re an advanced user. There are three basic types of exclusions/exceptions in the Avast Antivirus 2015:
Global exclusion of the folder/file/program from being scanned at all
Global exclusion of the website/URL from being scanned at all
Exclusion in the specific shield (File System Shield, Mail Shield, or Web Shield)
Exclude Specific Folder/File/Program from All Avast Antivirus Scans

If you want to add the exception for the specific website, domain, or URL from being scanned by Avast, follow these steps.
Open the Avast user interface and go to ‘Settings‘ » ‘General‘
Find the tab ‘EXCLUSIONS‘ and add specific websites or URLs in the ‘Urls‘ tab. Please note ‘http://’ will be added automatically, so if you want to exclude Yahoo, just type yahoo.com. Please note you need to differentiate between ‘http://’ and ‘https://’
Added URLs will now be excluded from any Avast scanning

Adding File/Folder/Program Exception into Avast 2015

On the screenshot above you can see that URLs ‘http://www.yahoo.com‘ and ‘https://www.yahoo.com‘ are excluded. Such exceptions also apply to all pages on these domains as we have used ‘/*’ in the path.


Exclude Specific Website/Domain/URL from All Avast Antivirus Scans

If you want to add the exception for the specific Avast shield, follow these steps.
Open the Avast user interface and go to ‘Settings‘ » ‘Active Protection‘
Select the shield (File System, Mail, or Web) in which you want to add the exception, and click on ‘Customize’ link
Find the menu item ‘Exclusions‘ and add the item you want to exclude from scanning by the specific Avast shield. You can also specify when the exclusion applies (for reading, writing, or executing)
Please note that global exclusions are always applied although they aren’t listed in the specific shield. Also, please note a lot of items are listed there by default

Adding Website/Domain/URL Exception into Avast 2015

On the screenshot above you can see that URLs ‘http://www.yahoo.com‘ and ‘https://www.yahoo.com‘ are excluded. Such exception also applies to all pages on these domains as we have used ‘/*’ in the path.
Add Exception for Specific Avast Antivirus Shield (File System, Mail, or Web)

If you want to add the exception for the specific Avast shield, follow the steps further.
Open the Avast user interface and go to ‘Settings‘ » ‘Active Protection‘
Select the shield (File System, Mail, or Web) for which you want to add the exception, and click on ‘Customize’ link
Find the menu item ‘Exclusions‘ and add item you want to exclude from scanning by the specific Avast shield. You can also specify when the exclusion applies (for reading, writing, or executing)
Please note that global exclusions are always applied although they aren’t listed in the specific shield. Also please note lot of items are listed there by default

Adding Specific Shield (File System, Mail, or Web) Exception into Avast 2015

On the screenshot above, you can see many items are excluded from the File System Shield scan by default. We haven’t added any of them.
Disclaimer

Although we have used Avast Free Antivirus 2015 screenshots in this article, these steps are also applicable for all Avast Antivirus solutions (i.e. also for Avast Pro Antivirus, Avast Internet Security, or Avast Premier).