Security settings dialog

To activate this dialog select "Settings…" command in Options menu and click on "Security" tab. The dialog contents are described below.

File types to exclude from extracting

If you enable this option, you can specify the list of potentially dangerous file masks in input field below. It is allowed to enter several masks separated by spaces. WinRAR will skip files matching any of these masks when extracting or opening archived files.

This option may help to protect users from infected email attachments. For example, if you enter:

*.scr *.pif *.exe

in this field, it will prohibit users to unpack, view and run .scr, .pif and .exe files with WinRAR.

Propose to select virus scanner

This option modifies behavior of Scan archive for viruses command. By default it is enabled, so WinRAR proposes to select virus scanner name and parameters every time when activating the virus scanning command. If you use only one antivirus, it is possible to skip the antivirus selection step by turning this option off.

Wipe temporary files

When user starts an external viewer from WinRAR shell or extracts files using the drag and drop, WinRAR creates temporary files in temporary folder. By default such files are removed using the standard system delete function and they can be recovered with special software sometimes. If you set Wipe temporary files option on, before deleting file data will be overwritten by zero bytes to prevent file recovery. It is more secure, but noticeably slower, so turn the option on only if you are working with sensitive data.

Note that if temporary files are still in use, WinRAR may not delete them immediately. Instead, when you run WinRAR the next time, all temporary files older than one hour will be deleted or wiped out.

This option works only with temporary files created after extraction operations. It may not work with different kind of temporary files like those created when modifying an archive.