Tex2018

@Stephen Piriform. I have been in mainframe computing for 43 years and well understand software development, diagnostic and reporting needs. But in today's world, companies such as yours think it is OK to harvest the customer's data first, without the customer's knowledge and later admit to it when caught doing so. I don't think I need to remind you of why this particular thread exists in the first place do I? Some of the things in the "Data Factsheet" (while they may be justifiable collections to you) are not necessarily OK with me. Saying that your company "has been doing this for years" doesn't make it OK to do so under the conditions that your "Factsheet" wants to justify. Where is the button or single option within your software that completely shuts off all reporting at the User's discretion? You see, some of us are not as trusting as you would have us be of what the software is reporting to a number of different internet locations. This country (the US) is starting to wake-up to what is (and has been) going on with their personal data being harvested in so called "justifiable" and "just trust me" means. Things will be changing in this regard if consumers and/or their governments take a stand and put a stop to it. It is my position that your company had better start recognizing that a paradigm shift is occurring.

My point is all about "consumer privacy" and not whether Piriform has been harvesting data from Users for years. We are in an age where the privacy of the computing public is being taken for granted and without their explicit knowledge or permission. My post was to raise awareness of just how Piriform is doing this today even after I had set all the available options to not harvest data from my PC. I also wanted other Users to be aware that Piriform is making multiple connections to places that I had no knowledge they were doing until I placed my ESET firewall in-between Piriform and the outside world. I don't even know where some of those internet connections are located or what/why they are attempting to send my data there. This is completely unacceptable to me and apparently to many other customers. "Twitchy" would be an understatement to describe how I feel about this matter.

Even with all the "privacy" settings enabled to supposedly prevent sending of personal information, and using version 5.44, the CCleaner software is a "busy little bee" attempting to send and make contact with several different destinations. I decided to run just a simple cleanup of temporary files using 5.44 with my firewall (previously set) set to block all connections from CCleaner.exe. I had (152) attempts by CCleaner across a variety of differing outgoing connections that were blocked by the firewall. Every one of the connections blocked in the image below was originated from the CCleaner.exe application and intercepted by my Firewall rule to block them. For anyone thinking they can disable the settings in the software to control privacy, you need to (as many here have suggested) setup a firewall block of the software. It is pervasive and repeatedly attempting to send data from your PC to various internet locations.

Just wanted to thank-you Moderators for being (refreshingly) open and honest with the forum members here. You don't see that much in moderated forums these days. Well done ! I don't think that the "kimono will be opened" by Piriform and the truth told because of the potential legal liabilities. In today's world, it is rare for a company to openly admit they did wrong without being legally forced to do it. More examples (and variations) surface every day of the unsuspecting public being spied upon buy the very software tools they use each day. The corruption embedded in that kind of stuff and the cover-ups to shield discovery is very disturbing. All the best to everyone here that is looking for a replacement product to something that we should have been able to trust, but can't.

I was speaking purely from Piriform's point of view regarding "competitors" and in that sense any other company (including Microsoft) is a competitor if they take business from Piriform. But, in Piriform's case, they don't have to worry about competitors because they are fully capable of killing their own business themselves. Yes, I'd seen the "sage" related method of running cleanmgr when I researched that utility...thanks for the help anyway.

Yes, that is what I've been using since this whole thing with v5.45 surfaced. I'd hesitated to say so because I thought it might be seen (by a Mod) as promoting another product. Typically, I'm not a fan of the free utilities that Microsoft bundles with the OS, but in this case it is actually useful.

Just to add a few more thoughts on this mess. Having been in business for ~43yrs, I've seen a lot of situations that companies, employees and customers can get themselves into. Quite often, people will get into a self-imposed catch-22 of not being forthright instead of just owning what they did and telling the truth. That is what I believe is happening in this situation and why the customer base is not hearing what they expect (the truth). Losing trust with your customers is a going-out-of-business strategy and getting to that point is equally bad. The problem (for me) is that regardless of what Stephen Piriform says, the customer has no assurance that lip-service isn't afoot. What assurance would the customer have that harvesting customer data wouldn't continue in just another form? Think Google and the fact that they are still tracking you on your phone even after the user thinks they have disabled it. Companies that practice this kind of behavior are likely to continue it in whatever new manner they can invent because of greed. It is a sad commentary on how invasive software has become upon a society that trusts too much and thinks "social media" is the answer to all things. If Piriform can't at least recognize their deed, and specifically, publicly speak to what they have done, why would anyone trust them regardless of what they do with the next (or future) versions? It bothers me that the only way that I discovered what was happening with v5.45 was that I got curious and did a web-search. I'd noticed that they removed the ability to stop the application from the taskbar icon. That immediately caused me to question "why would they do that"? A web-search led me to discovering the rest of what they had done. Think of all the customers out there that upgraded to v5.45 and still have no idea what has been done. Did any of us get a message from Piriform that we may want to consider reverting to a previous version? Therein lies another part of the misdeed...not telling the rest of the customers even after you have been caught. It is an old aberrant behavior that repeats itself in many ways across history and is very much alive today. Also, the hunt for a replacement product isn't exactly a clean result and it bothers me that Piriform customers have been now forced to consider that move. So many products of this type are free and from entities where you have no idea as to their trustworthiness. A person could be jumping from one fire into another so to speak.

Having read this entire thread, beyond the obvious breach of trust issue, there is something that really bothers me. It is that Piriform thought that it was OK to do this by omission of notice thereby not notifying the customer. That is very much like what we've seen happen at Google, Facebook and the like. Wake up. People don't like this kind of stuff at all and it is never OK to do it first and wait to see if anyone finds out later. That is what just happened to Piriform customers and why some have lost trust with this company (myself included). This is really bad behavior from a company that is supposed to be helping the customer make their PC's more secure. I have been a paying customer for CCleaner Pro and still have life on that license. And by the way, I've reverted to version 5.44, but it too still has several areas that the User needs to disable regarding information gathering by Piriform. I've also blocked all outgoing ability of the software in my firewall and am looking for a replacement (not free) that is from a more reputable company.