CCleaner Pro "Lifetime" Licence - why has it expired?

[jayzus]

also have the above error - says my license is invalid and now my version of ccleaner is marked as unregistered

[Dave CCleaner]

3 hours ago, jayzus said:

also have the above error - says my license is invalid and now my version of ccleaner is marked as unregistered

@jayzus: 99% of the time that would be due to mistyping the licence information when registering a copy of CCleaner.  Keys purchased prior to 2017 were only disabled in the event of a refund, trade-in or licence abuse.  If you believe that none of those apply to you then please contact support.

[murdog]

22 hours ago, Dave CCleaner said:

@jayzus: 99% of the time that would be due to mistyping the licence information when registering a copy of CCleaner.  Keys purchased prior to 2017 were only disabled in the event of a refund, trade-in or licence abuse.  If you believe that none of those apply to you then please contact support.

i have the same issue as of today as well had my key since 2014 and now im got a popaying my key is not longer valid and when i look it says unregistered. so of the software i bought the key is still working for all but ccleaner 

CCleaner Professional Plus

4 Products in 1! Professional versions of CCleaner, Defraggler, Recuva and Speccy. Full feature set, software updates and priority support. Instant online delivery!

 

when i open the other 3 software it says there still registered to me and run just like the did the last few years ccleaner however is telling me every time i close and open it that the registaragin information you have entered is invalid please re-enter your details and i do and it tells me its invalled and if i close the program and reopen it still has my name and key saved and tells me its invalid. something is up here.

Edited April 30, 2020 by murdog

[Guest]

I have the same issue.... Tried to remedy it by downloading the new version released yesterday. It first asks for the key and it then it asks for my name and spew some s**t about the key being invalid.

[FedUPwPiriform]

[childish obscene rant deleted - grow up]

Edited April 30, 2020 by Dave CCleaner

[Dave CCleaner]

@dottoss @murdog: The answer you seek is right there in what murdog quoted.

[Guest]

18 minutes ago, Dave CCleaner said:

@dottoss @murdog: The answer you seek is right there in what murdog quoted.

That's an answer, I'll give you that, just not one that I was hoping for. It makes it actually easier for me. I'm out. 

edit - if you would be so kind, can you delete/inactivate my user profile? I'm rather conscious about where I have accounts on the internet. Could not find it on the forum profile settings.

Edited May 1, 2020 by Guest

[Dave CCleaner]

3 minutes ago, dottoss said:

That's an answer, I'll give you that, just not one that I was hoping for. It makes it actually easier for me. I'm out. 

I did try to recommend that you contact support so that you could get answer in private - but if you would like a public answer specific to your case: you didn't mistype your key.  Your key was disabled for licence abuse. 

To reiterate the previous points for all - if you bought a home use "version-based" licence prior to 2018 and are using on the number of PCs that you bought it for then no-one has "switched anything off".  However, if you bought a 1 PC licence and are using it on a half dozen home PCs, have deployed it across your company network, have published it on your blog for anyone to use, or have tried to resell the same key to hundreds of people on eBay - you are inevitably going to have a bad time.

Anyone who may have made a genuine mistake is encouraged to contact support to see what they can do for you (rather than outing yourself in public).

[Sonartech]

3 hours ago, Dave CCleaner said:

I did try to recommend that you contact support so that you could get answer in private - but if you would like a public answer specific to your case: you didn't mistype your key.  Your key was disabled for licence abuse. 

To reiterate the previous points for all - if you bought a home use "version-based" licence prior to 2018 and are using on the number of PCs that you bought it for then no-one has "switched anything off".  However, if you bought a 1 PC licence and are using it on a half dozen home PCs, have deployed it across your company network, have published it on your blog for anyone to use, or have tried to resell the same key to hundreds of people on eBay - you are inevitably going to have a bad time.

Anyone who may have made a genuine mistake is encouraged to contact support to see what they can do for you (rather than outing yourself in public).

 

Well, thanks very much PowerDave, for confirming what I already suspected: CCleaner phone's home.  That's great.  What else does it collect and then report when it tattles on its paying user?  Avast! has successfully transmogrified CCleaner into a SAAS monstrosity, worthy of ruining former customers and effectively screwing any new ones stupid enough to pay for it and load it onto their machine.  I congratulate you all on your eager willingness to suck down that tasty Avast! Koolaide.

I find it deeply ironic how you dare to mention the term "license abuse" when that is precisely what Avast did to every paying CCleaner customer.  I guess it's OK for you to screw people, but god-forbid a paying customer uses your "free" spyware to clean their registry once a month.  When not spying on people, CCleaner's loading Malware on to your machine due to their lack of build security.  Oh, you don't remember that fiasco?  LOOK IT UP, then ask yourself, do I really want to put this junk on MY machine?  

 

[Dave CCleaner]

3 hours ago, Sonartech said:

CCleaner phone's home

No - actually it comes from when a computer registers a licence key.  It is pretty fundamental to any form of licence management to be able to know how many computers paid software has been installed on.  This is not exactly a new development for Piriform - the very first entry in the activation table is dated 2010-11-30 at around 3pm GMT.  Its primary use is for customer service - letting customers know if they have purchased a licence but haven't installed it yet, or troubleshooting if a customer has accidentally made duplicate purchases so we can help them figure out which one they are actually using.  But given the rate at which some businesses seem to like to pirate software - licence enforcement is also a thing, and has been since the beginning.

3 hours ago, Sonartech said:

What else does it collect and then report when it tattles on its paying user?

Number of times registered is pretty much it in terms of anything tied to an account.  But a more comprehensive answer to that question is available from inside the Options > Privacy section of the CCleaner product itself.  For those who may have missed the link, here it is: https://www.ccleaner.com/about/data-factsheet.

[murdog]

well i never got a refund or upgrade/trade in or anything like that or posted my key anywhere or let anyone i know use it  or used it a bunch, maybe 7 times since i got it in 2014 and i only put it on new devices when i get them and retire the old ones and have only used the key or program at my old house new house at work on laptop so i cant see it being abused. also why would ccleaner be the only one affected i install the 4 programs every time on each device why is ccleaner the only one no longer working. if my key was revoked why does speccy revoca and defragger work fine. any why now i installed it the last time on my 2ed desktop a few months ago if i was at my key limit or something why would i not have triggered it then. again something is up and i'm still waiting to hear back from support.

[The Ultimate Bug]

I also believe that I purchased a lifetime license in 2014.
I attached a screenshot of my invoice (which doesn't mention anything about a subscription or 1 year of whatever. And the first time I requested to send my license key (July 2015), there was no expiry date.

Also my license is no longer accepted:

Quote

The registration information you entered is invalid.
Please re-enter your details.

 

Patrick

[psychopomp1]

Very very disappointed with Piriform. Like others, I'm now also getting the message that the registration key of my CCleaner Pro is no longer valid - despite being used on a single PC all the time, therefore not in breach of any t&c's. I asked Piriform support to sort out my licence issue and this is the response:

Quote

"it would seem that our licence management system recently automatically disabled your licence for overuse when it was flagged as having been used on 13 distinct machines - which is naturally problematic for a single PC home-use licence.

We understand that this sort of thing can happen over time, and a couple of options for you would be:

 

 

• If you only need CCleaner for one PC I can create you a complementary replacement licence - although note that this would only last for 12 months and then need to be renewed at the prevailing rate.
• If you need CCleaner for multiple computers, we have an offer on at the moment on 2 year licences of the 3 PC CCleaner Professional Plus bundle here [private link removed]
• If neither of those options appeal, there is always the free version of CCleaner available from https://www.ccleaner.com which of course has no limit on the number of PCs.

 

 

If the first option works for you then let me know and I can get that created for you."

They clearly want one-time licence holders of Ccleaner pro to start paying. I'm not even going to take up their offer of a free 1 year licence.

Goodbye Piriform, won't be touching any of your products ever again....even if they come with so called lifetime/one-off licence fees.

 

Edited May 3, 2020 by Dave CCleaner
"members-only" discount link removed

[Dave CCleaner]

15 hours ago, psychopomp1 said:

They clearly want one-time licence holders of Ccleaner pro to start paying

Well naturally it would be lovely if they did - but, in the interests of transparency, I would make the observation that of all of the CCleaner Professional licence keys created prior to 2018, less than 3% have been cancelled for any reason (including refunds, licence abuse, etc) since licence revocation started back in 2012.

One might reasonably conclude that with a cumulative rate of less than 3%, there is probably not some form of nefarious cash grab afoot.

[HenkZelf]

Bought a lifetime license in 2012. When I heard that Ccleaner was bought by the crooks of Avast, I was afraid that they would destroy this beautiful product with all kinds of extra financial gain and yes! Suddenly my license is no longer valid !! Well Avast, just sink in and I'll clean up in a different way.

[The Ultimate Bug]

@Dave CCleaner Do you have figures about how many licenses are bought after CCleaner because a subscription?
Concerning subscriptions to software, there is only 1 subscription which is acceptable: Microsoft Office 365. 6 users, big mailbox, 1TB cloud data per person, superb applications.

Many people joked about Microsoft in the sense of Micro$oft. But I believe it's no longer true. Every company needs to make money. A company gets my respect in the way that they do (quality and service is also very important).

For me, the mother company of CCleaner is known to Ava$t. A vast majority will agree (did you get my silly joke)?

Patrick

[Dave CCleaner]

49 minutes ago, HenkZelf said:

Bought a lifetime license

It's curious - looking back through over 8 years of customer support tickets, we have had customers asking if they can purchase a "lifetime" licence and consistently being told that no such thing exists.  Here is an example from 2012:

It seems that pretty much from Day 1 of selling CCleaner Professional, we have also had CCleaner users claiming to have purchased a "lifetime licence" (and some of the older cases, oddly, claim to have purchased back from before we were even selling licences).  Over the past several years, when customers have been asked where they saw the word "lifetime" in promotional material it has always been from fly-by-night eBay merchants or other resellers with no connection to Piriform.  Here is an example of one that is about to be removed from eBay for software piracy.

... which is all very academically interesting, but largely irrelevant since ...

49 minutes ago, HenkZelf said:

Suddenly my license is no longer valid

... which is a completely unrelated matter either arising from a data entry error when attempting to register your copy of CCleaner (solutions here https://support.piriform.com/hc/en-us/articles/204043844--Problems-activating-or-registering-CCleaner-Professional) or having had your licence flagged for overuse - about which you can contact support.

[HenkZelf]

49 minutes ago, Dave CCleaner said:

It's curious - looking back through over 8 years of customer support tickets, we have had customers asking if they can purchase a "lifetime" licence and consistently being told that no such thing exists.

 

I bought it as a lifetime license because there was no mention of an annual renewal anywhere. I've also had updates from 2012 effortlessly and often reinstalled when I had a new PC or laptop again. Status was always 'registered'. So you went wrong somewhere with communication and control.

[Sonartech]

Actually, Henk, there was.  It was buried in the EULA that no one bothered to read and, most importantly, it was not enforced by Piriform.  If you go to the wayback machine (or just read this stupidly long thread) there are several links that point to the 2012 EULA that mentions that yearly term.  The problem is Piriform elected not to enforce the terms of their own EULA for many years past that 1 year term, as in doing so, gave their customers a false sense of permanency.  Instead of of dealing with it like reasonable adults, Avast elected to take the bait & switch route, springing the change in enforcement policy on anyone who paid for the product in the past without any notice whatsoever - and then not giving a crap about how that looked and felt to paying customers.  Instead of treating it like a potential opportunity to save face, clean up the past and make money going forward, they decided to slam the door on us and then tell us it was our own damn fault. 

Dave's right - there never was an official downloadable "lifetime" license for CCleaner, but there also wasn't any enforcement of the yearly subscription model, either.  There's one person in this thread who managed to buy a boxed-copy of CCleaner, and that's as close to a "lifetime" license as their was - and even that one's somewhat shaky, because the software EULA for the version contained in that boxed copy (that mentions nothing on the box about a 1 year term) also makes reference to the 1 year term.  As long as it wasn't enforced, no one had any reason to care...

So this is entirely Piriform's mess.  Avast just made that mess worse by mishandling the messaging to paying customers, not acknowledging the screw-up made so long ago by Piriform, and instead deciding that shoving their SaaS model down paying customers' throats was somehow better than taking advantage of the opportunity to increase value, fix the problems of the past and make money going forward.

At this point, I've moved on.  My goal in life now is to cost Avast more money than I spent on my copy of CCleaner Pro, and I've already done that at least 100-fold.  I've managed to get 6 of my clients to drop Avast entirely (I'm working on 4 more) and I've had them removed from several corporate AVL's (Authorized Vendor List).  Either treat your existing customers with dignity, or risk having your customers remind you that you need their business more than they need yours.

Dump CCleaner and Avast along with them.  There are plenty of decent alternatives out there.

[HenkZelf]

3 hours ago, Sonartech said:

Dump CCleaner and Avast along with them.  There are plenty of decent alternatives out there.

@Sonartech Thank you, I agree completely with your story and all my experiences with Avast mean that I advise all my customers to remove Avast products. Karma takes care of the rest.

[Squaresoft]

On 10/05/2020 at 13:40, Sonartech said:

Actually, Henk, there was.  It was buried in the EULA---, most importantly, it was not enforced by Piriform.

 

I bought it as a lifetime license too, there was no mention of an annual renewal anywhere.
Not before, not after the purchase. Not while registering the product. Nope, anywhere.
I always double-check if it's a limited or lifetime payment, since I don't support limited payments. (Should have checked thrice)
I'm really disappointed, I used and recommended CCPro to everybody for years.

Now, the interesting part: In the computer I use everyday, I used CCPro for many years without a problem, suddenly I updated CC and this message about my Expired License started popping up and I lost every single Pro function.
In my laptop I didn't updated to the latest version, and I can still use the Pro functions and such message never shows up, just the "There is a new version" pop up (IT'S A TRAP!) so it's something within the newer version?.

Anyway, they already got my money with a misleading message (Consumer protection? ha) and I will not receive a lifetime product. I'm moving on.

Edited May 13, 2020 by Squaresoft

[Derek_S]

I have posted a few times previously in this thread that the answer for me was to go to this page: https://filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/5.58.0.7209.0/ and download the file which is the last version from last summer that works on an older version based licence.

Then uninstall CCleaner but leave the .ini settings intact. Install the older version of CCleaner Pro and once it's ready, open it and IMMEDIATELY disable automatic updates. If you don't already know where you do that, look at your present version to see where it is in the settings. It's important that you can do this quickly as otherwise you will be updated to a subscription version. Theoretically, that should stop it updating itself and it did use to work that way but I realised recently that mine is now showing 5.63.7540 so it has resumed updating itself even though I turned that off. However, even though I have started getting reminders about the licence being expired again, mainly it seems when there is a special offer on, it has continued to be fully functional and I get automatic cleaning notices whenever it goes over around 1.2 GB of wasted space, which is most days in my case.

So it is still as usable as it ever was. Nothing is non functioning.

[Derek_S]

I forgot to say it should go without saying that once you have installed an older version you certainly don't want to manually update to a newer version yourself even though you will get messages suggesting you do.

[Andavari]

That will only work for awhile, up to the point when Microsoft won't allow an old version to be used at all on Windows, Windows 10 at least and there's a bunch of old versions the don't allow.

[Dave CCleaner]

10 hours ago, Squaresoft said:

this message about my Expired License started popping up and I lost every single Pro function

If you purchased your licence before 2018 then the thing that popped up would have said "Your CCleaner service has expired! (An active subscription gives you priority customer support and ensures continued access to the latest version of CCleaner)" ... which if you care not for the support and updates then you can cheerfully ignore and continue to use your old licence like hundreds of thousands of other CCleaner users who purchased prior to 2018 (at least while the version of CCleaner that you are using is still supported by the version of Windows that you are using).

It sounds like the one that you saw may have been "Your CCleaner License Key is Invalid!" which has absolutely nothing to do with when you purchased it or what CCleaner version you are using.