Some Windows software has become so ingrained into PC users’ minds that we don’t think twice to recommend them. Unfortunately, this leads to major issues when
a popular tool goes rogue.
That’s exactly what’s happened with CCleaner. Once everyone’s favorite Windows maintenance utility,
its increasingly shady behavior means that you should now leave it in the dust.
Why Is CCleaner No Longer Safe?
CCleaner, once a tidy app with no history of issues, has had several major problems in less than a year after Avast purchased CCleaner developer Piriform.
CCleaner Silently Forces Updates
The latest CCleaner controversy comes from ignoring user preferences about checking for updates.
CCleaner’s Monitoring
CCleaner’s biggest recent controversy came in version 5.45. This included a feature called “Active Monitoring,” a fairly standard feature that collects anonymized information about your system.
As it turns out, if you disabled Active Monitoring in CCleaner, the software automatically re-enabled it after you rebooted or reopened CCleaner. This is extremely suspicious behaviour.
CCleaner was much harder to quit
When you clicked the X to close the software, it instead minimized to your System Tray. If you right-clicked its icon, there was no option to exit CCleaner. This means you had to close it using the Task Manager, which novice users might not know how to do.
Thus, CCleaner now ran constantly in the background, collecting data for Avast.
CCleaner was hacked and distributed malware.
The 32-bit version was infected with a Trojan that collected information about systems it was installed on. It also had the capability to run code on affected systems.
Thankfully, the company caught it before a widespread attack could happen. But it’s pretty embarrassing that a top-tier security company like Avast had such an embarrassing slip-up.
CCleaner annoying pop-ups
CCleaner shows pop-ups harassing you to upgrade to the paid version (which has an automatic cleaning feature). And installing CCleaner sometimes shows an offer to install Avast, which you must uncheck to avoid.