One aspect of the latest release (2017-07-25) is VERY annoying to me. The Active Monitoring feature is EXTREMELY difficult to turn OFF. This is a feature that looks at EVERYTHING YOU DO and keeps records of it. Yes, the use of those records is supposedly benign -- CCleaner will just help me delete those traces, right? But what if I tell you to stop monitoring me? And yet you don't? Am I going to TRUST that your monitoring is benign? No no no. I'm going to pull the PANIC BUTTON. You must must must STOP MONITORING ME!! GIVE ME MY PRIVACY BACK!
Active Monitoring is defaulted to ON when you download this release (despite previous versions having it turned OFF at the time the new release is installed). That's already unreasonable. Then, in order to PREVENT future Active Monitoring, you have to take THREE steps, yes 3, three, THREE! First, (a) deselect the option in the Advanced Options dialog of CCleaner, then (b) disable the Active Monitoring start-up item, BUT NOT DELETE IT (if you delete it, the next run of CCleaner will re-install it, DEFAULTED TO THE ON POSITION AGAIN!), (this deselection also can be done with CCleaner or with any of a number of other start-up-management utilities) and then (the shocker!) you still aren't yet done. That's because you CAN'T QUIT CCLEANER! It's already in Actively Monitoring mode (despite the fact that you didn't want it to do this, it nevertheless has started monitoring on its own) so it will NOT GO AWAY! You have to (c) use Task Manager or some other third-party utility to turn off CCleaner (which otherwise will continue to run and will continue to Actively Monitor despite steps (a) and (b) above, AND FURTHERMORE will re-set your start-up setting from off to on). Then (d) restart your computer. Wow, that's TOO MUCH to make an invasion of privacy go away. Try this: one click. Period.
This is too difficult, and almost to the point of misleading. The present arrangement manages to "force" CCleaner to run in the background even when you go WAY out of your way to prevent it from doing so. I hope this was a mistake. (If instead it's a deliberate feature, designed to cause CCleaner to exist in the hidden-but-running state, unbeknownst to most typical users, secretly collecting their private information, then this would be the first time in my experience with Piriform that your company has acted so much like Microsoft that I would want to get rid of you if I could. That's not in typical Piriform character.) You've managed to set up your program so that the instant a user first uses it, the user is suddenly, unwittingly, and involuntarily permanently saddled with a pervasive and permanent, and yet potentially unwanted, monitor of 100% of that user's activity forever, a monitor that is essentially secret. This is the case unless the user is more than averagely informed about technical settings and about background processes. To rephrase: YOU'RE SPYING ON ME WITHOUT MY CONSENT EVEN AFTER I DEMAND THAT YOU DON'T DO IT. That's way way WAY uncool.
Suggestion: provide a QUIT button that actually ENDS CCleaner's activity; and provide an INSTANTANEOUS and EFFECTIVE way to disable the Active Monitoring, with ONE CLICK that will (1) end any presently ongoing monitoring AND ALSO will (2) disable any future monitoring from re-starting without user input. The present set-up is a subterfuge that implements invasions of my privacy directly against what I thought were my express wishes (by selecting certain more private settings) otherwise, because when I select those certain more private settings, they are not implemented transparently, but instead are controverted by other contradictory and misleading settings.