Microsoft blacklists CCleaner ?

[Willy2]

- It seems MS blacklisted any references to CCleaner:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/ccleaner-v5.370654/page-50#post-2859150

- Does CC put malware/bloatware in it products ? Is the registry cleaner "too aggressive" ? My personal opinion is that CC could be much more "aggressive" when it comes to cleaning the registry.

[Dave CCleaner]

All very strange.  We are trying to find out why their forum admins might have done that. No-one had reached out to us in advance expressing any concerns, but blacklisting links to one of the world's most popular sets of PC utilities seems like an odd thing to do on a whim.

We'd like to give them a chance to respond and are avoiding any conspiracy theory speculation in the meantime.

[Willy2]

- "Wilders Security" is a serious website.

- Is the Piriform website hacked ? Infected with malware ? That could explain this action.

[nukecad]

It's worth making clear that MS has not 'blacklisted' CCleaner, despite what some of these headlines are implying.

MS user forums are simply automatically removing any posted links to www.ccleaner.com.

They haven't said why as yet, but many fora put blocks on posting any links at all, or direct download links, etc.

Forum mods routinely remove advertising links from their particular forum.

[Andavari]

21 hours ago, Willy2 said:

- Is the Piriform website hacked ? Infected with malware ? That could explain this action.

Symantec Norton Safe Web ratings for Avast/CCleaner/Piriform:
OK = https://safeweb.norton.com/report/show?url=avast.com
OK = https://safeweb.norton.com/report/show?url=ccleaner.com
OK = https://safeweb.norton.com/report/show?url=piriform.com

VirusTotal ratings:
Avast:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/06cff1e1b01dd07190caac75578ebdc64a1ba13654dafb5671eed68a5aa0a0b9/detection

CCleaner:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/10796057939aee7aa046e4f31592bafba4785640e9e056c0979c4df61037892b/detection

Piriform:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/9f5530c018edd2bd2619cef4a9374a5a6410d9ae20a6c830cda442f1a8ceef76/detection

Edited September 26, 2019 by Andavari
Added VirusTotal ratings

[Dave CCleaner]

This is all starting to smell a little bit like a hoax.  The original blog post that fed this news item was already removed yesterday and has now been replaced with this: https://www.htnovo.net/2019/09/riguardo-ccleaner-nei-forum-microsoft.html

[Willy2]

- Ooooops.

- Seems someone "didn't like" Ccleaner and wanted "to hurt" CCleaner and "got called out for it". Well, perhaps the best solution is to remove this entire thread.

[Dave CCleaner]

2 hours ago, Willy2 said:

Well, perhaps the best solution is to remove this entire thread.

Gossip and scandal always travel faster and wider than the corrections and retractions than follow - so handy to have this here as a reference point for folks wanting to find out more.