I have a question. If I added pop.secureserver.net (pop3 & pop3) to the exclusion, shouldn't Avast avoid (stop intercepting) that server?
because even though I added that to the exclusion list, it still won't let me connect to that pop server correctly.
The exclusion list is in fact IP address based as it can not be "by definition" done domain name based.
Although you can enter domain names, they are translated to the appropriate IP address when the
exclusion list is loaded. The problem is, that pop.secureserver.net uses round robin DNS, that gives
you every few seconds another IP address. So every time (POP3 connection) you get another address
than the one resolved when the exclusion list was loaded, the IP address does not match and the connection
goes still through the mail/web shield.