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.

Wipe temporary files

This group of options controls the delete mode for temporary files in WinRAR temporary folder generated when processing already existing archives. It involves external or internal viewer operations, executing an archived file or unpacking with the drag and drop.

Wipe temporary files/Never

If "Never" is selected, temporary files are removed using the standard system delete function and they can be recovered with special software sometimes. This is a fastest, but less secure way to deal with temporary files.

Wipe temporary files/Always

In "Always" mode, before deleting temporary files are overwritten by zero bytes to prevent their recovery. This is a noticeably slower and more secure approach.

Wipe temporary files/Encrypted only

If you selected "Encrypted only", temporary files are removed with the secure and slow wipe function if WinRAR identified an archive containing these files as encrypted. Otherwise a quick standard delete is applied.

Notes to "Wipe temporary files" options

• Wipe operation is designed for usual hard disks, but may fail to overwrite the original file data on solid state disks, as result of SSD wear leveling technology and more complicated data addressing.
• 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. The same happens if WinRAR cannot reliably detect if temporary files are still in use by external application.
• This option works only with temporary files created after extraction operations. It does not work with different kind of temporary files like those created when modifying an archive. Such files are always removed with the standard quick delete.

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.