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CCleaner update removed following outcry over privacy concerns


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More problems for the popular system-cleaning tool

 

2018-08-06-image-7.jpg

What just happened? Ever since security giant Avast acquired Piriform, the makers of CCleaner, in July last year, it hasn’t been smooth sailing for the system-cleaning tool. Now, the company has been forced to pull the latest update following an outcry over its privacy issues.

It was discovered that in the newest version of CCleaner 5.45, the privacy settings had been removed from the free version. Even worse, the active monitoring feature, which can be disabled by users, turned itself back on whenever the program was shut down or the computer rebooted.

Avast said in a changelog that it "added more detailed reporting for bug fixes and product improvements." The company added that its heartbeat feature, which sends usage statistics to Avast every 12 hours, contained “non-personal, absolutely non-identifiable usage information for the purpose of improving CCleaner.”

Additionally, it was found that clicking the X icon in the corner of CCleaner minimized the software rather than closing it, keeping it running in the background—something people have compared to spyware tactics.

Piriform has now reverted to version 5.44 of CCleaner as the latest update, which you can download here. The company said it is working on changes in version 5.45 to address users’ concerns, but these will take weeks rather than days to implement.

Back in September, it was reported that up to 2.27 million CCleaner users were put at risk from a backdoor found in the program. Avast later revealed how the attackers compromised the software.

Since the acquisition by Avast, once loyal users have complained of bundled software and popup ads appearing in CCleaner, and this is yet another piece of bad publicity for the popular tool.

 

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coromonadalix

Another reason not to use it and do your own cleaning, i simply build an batch file who do the job

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10 minutes ago, coromonadalix said:

Another reason not to use it and do your own cleaning, i simply build an batch file who do the job

 

A batch file to do registry cleaning? ;)

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Novak Gregor

Wise Registry Cleaner Free and Wise Disk Cleaner Free are currently the best & most popular free alternatives on the market.

Thus the newest CCleaner version is better (no more forced Monitoring).

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Lets hope they will think first and learn from there mistakes , before releasing next update.............

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They wasted a good product.
Reverting it to the last good version simply does not automatically revert the distrust of its users now it has on their product.

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I haven't updated CCleaner since v5.40. Now, I have no more reason to update seeing that Avast acquired Piriform and seems to be doing the opposite of improving the program.

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knowledge-Spammer

and yet i still like ccleaner  how this  can be i am unsure  i wait the next version and see

 

i have much info on ccleaner and what they do and have  and y they did this   but i cant comment in open as it will hurt ccleaner  program  but i think they have got the users now and will change it again  i hope for better  and not to hide  it again   i watch ccleaner and there team and what they do to never version   and i see y they do or did it

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