I was keeping my personal opinions out of the post above, - I'm 100% in agreement with Hazelnut.
Such a change is always going to upset customers but if you decide to do it then do it properly with a full announcement.
Don't pussyfoot around and try to sneak it onto people with no warning or explanation at all.
I'm also pretty concerened at the security aspect of the way it is being done by stealth, ie. using a 'backdoor'.
To me that is a bigger concern that any change in what is Free or not.
CCleaner can obviously give itself elevated permissions, that’s needed for certain features.
If they believe that they have the right to change your CCleaner remotely, without any intervention or permission from you, then what else on your machine might they decide that they have a right to change?
Even worse, if such ‘backdooring’ had been possible when CCleaner got hacked in 2017 then what might the hackers have been able to do?
Personally I'm conflicted, I'll always try to help others where I can.
However I’m also thinking about whether I still want to help a company that can act like this by moderating their forum for them.