Annoying Sales Popups from CCleaner - How to STOP!

[Dave CCleaner]

39 minutes ago, Léon said:

Just stop with reminders: people can think for themselves.

@Léon: You mentioned previously that you use the free version of CCleaner?  Which reminders/notifications/etc have you been getting?

[Léon]

Hello Dave CCleaner,

What I meant is to speak in general (not for myself).

I hate every kind of reminder or advertisement.

For myself and for others.

[Bastet]

I’m seeing these annoying pop ups/notifications too. While I’m happy to see a deal to extend my current CCleaner subscription I do not wish to purchase any other software as a bundle which means paying more to extend the subscription. Not exactly an offer imo. 50% or more off a 2 year subscription for CCleaner only then yes that is an offer.

[Agkistrodon_contortrix]

On 15/03/2021 at 23:04, Dave CCleaner said:

Note that those are not ads.  The example you gave was of a loyalty discount offer in a renewal reminder related to your subscription because you are coming up to expiry at some point in the near future.  From a couple of months before expiry you'd be getting a reminder about every 2 weeks - although when there is a special limited-time promotional discount available you may get 3-4 in the space of a week.

Stop lying. They are ADS. They ADVERTISE that you buy your product, they advertise *special discounts* And they spam, almost daily for 1/3 to 1/2 of the subscribed YEAR.
Your product has become more intrusive, and quite frankly, bad.
1 - 1 1/2 month prior with 2-3 reminders would be acceptable maybe, but  you´d still had to offer a PAYING CUSTOMER not to be bothered by them. But you don´t. Which is quite frankly malicious behavior. 
The registry cleaner, which acccording to experts shouldn´t be used, becuase it won´t fix anything, but has a high chance of breaking stuff, and an atrocious diver updater, which has caused me trouble more times than it hasn´t.

I once was a fan and return customer paying customer of your product, but scince you´ve been aquired by Avast, this product has continually become worse.

[Dave CCleaner]

2 hours ago, Agkistrodon_contortrix said:

And they spam, almost daily for 1/3 to 1/2 of the subscribed YEAR.

Not sure exactly what you are referring to here?  For the month before the subscription billing reminder there will be a couple of "better deal" offers for the upcoming renewal. And a few more afterwards. The only such notifications that would appear "almost daily" would be when you get to the last few days before expiry ("Your licence expires in X days") or if you are using a deactivated licence that needs to be replaced.

The only offers to paying customers outside of the renewal reminder cycle are the ones offering to trade-up to multi-device versions for the remaining 6/9 months of your subscription - which are set to appear once every 3 months.  Since these are not service notifications, they can be suppressed via Options > Privacy > Offers inside CCleaner.

If you are seeing subscription-related notifications more often that what is described then that would suggest that something may be going wrong with your client to make it ignore the message display rules.  The most common reason is would be that the flag for "I have already seen this message, so no need to show it to me again" is being wiped - which may be solvable via the solution attached below.   

 

[sjs94704]

I do not like these large Holiday cyber special offer popups that keep coming up on my sdcreen from CCleaner and I want the option to turn hem OFF!

I am very serious when I say that if they can't be turned off then I will be turning OFF CCleaner  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What's the verdict? Can I shut them off?

[User123456]

For the last few days I have been getting a popup advertising cyber Monday deal, looks like an ad. the fact I have to close this several times a day even though I have unchecked everything I can find annoys me to no end. I do not need to renew for nearly 4 months, I don't care about any special deals you may have. What I care about is your software working in the background without my notice. Your ad is being noticed.

After reading the responses from Dave CCleaner I am going to assume there will be no fixes, since he seems to have the opinion that we are at fault for noticing this.

If you cannot fix this issue I will not renew and I will uninstall your software immediately.

[redwolfe_98]

try going to ccleaner's options/privacy and disabling "show offers."

[Dave CCleaner]

On 02/12/2022 at 22:51, User123456 said:

I have to close this several times a day

As has been mentioned previously, there would be little benefit in sending this many messages, and the notification system is specifically set up to prevent that from happening.  For free users, for example, the messaging system has a hardcoded setting that will refuse to send a toaster message more than once every 2 days - no matter how many interesting things we think we have to tell you.

For paid users, the only times you would get a message two days in a row should be when you are right at expiry (ie: "Your licence expires tomorrow", "Your licence expires today") or on the final day of the Black Friday sale (which ended last week).

On 02/12/2022 at 22:51, User123456 said:

After reading the responses from Dave CCleaner I am going to assume there will be no fixes

As per the link above, the two reasons previously identified for seeing more than the scheduled number of notifications are either:

• Running a version of CCleaner 5.53 or lower (there was an overmessaging bug fixed back in CCleaner 5.54)
• Wiping the "I've already seen this once so no need to show it to me again tomorrow" flag.

The second scenario can often be fixed by going to Options > Cookies inside the CCleaner console, right-clicking on the "cookies to keep" collection and importing the attached cookies.txt file that will restore the "I've already seen this" flag to the cookies whitelist. 

cookies.txt

If there is something else going on with your computer that would be causing this, we need more information on your configuration so that we can try to replicate your issue if we are find the cause to fix it for you and any other impacted customers.  As you might expect, an issue that seems to impact a small number of users (out of ~100M) would be rather tricky to isolate without at least some clues.  For example:

• What version of Windows are you using?
• What version of CCleaner are you using?
• Have you already tried the "cookies to keep" suggestion above?
• What web browsers are installed on your computer?
• What AV and firewall software are you using?  Have you configured your firewall in such a way that might block the operation of CCleaner?
• Have you made any changes to your hosts file?
• Are you running any other system cleaning software that might be interfering with CCleaner?
• What were you doing on your computer just before a same-day duplicate message appeared?

 

 

[Dave CCleaner]

By way of update, there is a rather specific scenario for paid users that if you receive a "one every fortnight" renewal reminder in, say, English, and then change your language to German/French/Italian/etc then the changed language will have a different counter on it, which may result in you receiving the message twice in different languages. 

As of a couple of a few days ago, this has now been suppressed so if you change your language several times in a day, you may get a second notification in your new language, but at least not on the same day.  This may also help to mop up a couple of other corner cases as well for paid customers.

For any paid users receiving more than one renewal reminder per day, or free users receiving more than one sales toaster every 2 days, please let us know details as per the above so that we can investigate your case further.

[Dex_Luther]

On 05/12/2022 at 20:11, Dave CCleaner said:

 For free users, for example, the messaging system has a hardcoded setting that will refuse to send a toaster message more than once every 2 days - no matter how many interesting things we think we have to tell you.

The fact that you don't even see this as a problem, is a problem in and of itself.

The fact that the pop-ups show up whenever they please and **THEN THEY STAY THERE!** I sometimes connect to my remote PC that's largely unattended, and 10 times out of 10 there's a CCleaner pop-up that's been sitting there for days or weeks. This is another huge problem that you don't seem to realize. Actually, you probably just don't really care.

What you should realize though is that if you're going to interrupt a game or movie by forcing some pop-up toaster message that won't go away until I stop what I'm doing to click on the tiny little link to dismiss it, you're actually making it LESS likely for me (and probably many others) to EVER EVER EVER actually pay any money whatsoever. I'd be more likely to seek out a pirated copy.

It's still a problem even if I'm not doing anything at all like on my unintended remote PC.

Every one of those toaster messages actually makes it more likely that the software will be uninstalled in favor of one of the alternatives that don't annoy their users in that way.

The fact that you do nothing but passive-aggressively gaslight your users that are complaining about this behavior into thinking it's actually a good thing indicates that you don't really care if people uninstall because you probably already make tons of money from selling the usage data of users that continue to put up with it.

Edited January 1, 2023 by Dex_Luther

[FcukYourPopups]

Have had that intrusive, irritating popup for three days running, despite hitting 'I'll miss out' more than once.

 

Learning from their mistakes was never Avast's strong point.

 

Goodbye CCleaner, hello any number of freeware alternatives, some of which are said to be superior.

[GeisterWolf]

On 05/12/2022 at 19:11, Dave CCleaner said:

As has been mentioned previously, there would be little benefit in sending this many messages, and the notification system is specifically set up to prevent that from happening. 

Yet I get these every time I log on to my computer. I am sure most folks on this forum I referring to these types of messages. Plus also as you can see there is no way to remove this message. There no 'X' in the upper right corner. When I try to click on it it doesn't do anything. The only think that does work is the little Pin in the upper right corner. There are annoying especially when you cannot remove them. There are not options on the app to remove them. They are indeed a advertisement or solicitation to continue service with CCleaner. To say they are not would be incorrect. If you disagree, look up the word "Solicitation". 
So tell me how am I suppose to stop these or remove them?

[nukecad]

3 hours ago, GeisterWolf said:

Yet I get these every time I log on to my computer.

They are indeed a advertisement or solicitation to continue service with CCleaner.

So tell me how am I suppose to stop these or remove them?

That is not advertising - It is a warning that you are using an invalid licence key. (Almost certainly known fake, or hacked licence).

You will continue to see that message for as long as you persist in using an invalid key - until that key is banned altogether.
(Most companies would just have banned it outright, CCleaner is giving you a chance to do the decent thing).

To prevent seeing that particular notice is easy - either use CCleaner Free version or buy a valid licence key for CCleaner Professional.

[Andavari]

Options > About > Upgrade...

[AdValorem]

 CCleaner is not complying with its legal obligations.  The problem does not go away by Ccleaner  insisting that the pop-ups are not advertising.  I purchased Ccleaner through Cleverbridge.

At first blush, the pop-ups seem to be reminders to resubscribe, but when you follow them are actually promotional upgrades, are months in advance of my licence expiry, and on at least one occasion wrongly stated that my licence had expired.  That is promotional advertising.  Cleverbridge is in breach of its own privacy policy which states “Without your prior explicit consent, we will only send you Product-related announcements that are not promotional in nature (for example, notices related to your purchase of Products or information regarding the renewal of subscriptions) and only when we believe it is necessary to do so.”  The notices include renewal, but go much further.  22 popups in three months is not simply alerting me to the approaching end to my licence.  I neither want nor need to be peppered by these unwanted promotions, sometimes more than once a day.

At the very least, the popups are first party direct marketing.  I live in Australia, so Australian Privacy Principle 7 applies (I think parallels exist in Europe and North America).  That means that even if Ccleaner believes it should send me these popups and genuinely think thay are renewal subscriptions,  it must provide an easy way for me to opt out.  If I do opt out, it must stop sending them to me.  I have opted out many times, and Ccleaner has just ignored me.  I have tried to contact the Privacy Officers of Ccleaner, Avast, and Cleverbridge, but after 6-10 weeks none have not responded.

Over to you Ccleaner.  What are you doing to comply with your privacy obligations?

[sjs94704]

I am not trying to purposely turn anyone away from such a great product, but, at the end of the day, there needs to come a point where you ask yourself if you are still compatible with the software.

[Tropicrock]

Hi all,

I too am a long time user, and as a tech, once upon a time I used to recommend this software to every customer. But once Avast took over, and it all went to s**t, I stopped recommending to anyone.

But still kept using it myself. Originally I did not mind, as the price was not too bad, even though all the cleaning can be done without the aid of a program, but what can I say?, we are all lazy, and it is far easier to do it all at the press of a button, instead of taking all the necessary steps that are automated for us. However, the price has risen  200% in 4 years, or 100% at the "loyalty discount" price. And then there is the issue of pop-ups and non-advertising-advertising.

Now, as to the annoying pop-up advertising that is not advertising apparently, I have worked out the correct way to finally stop it.
If you simply right click on the windows icon or perform a search, there is a built in program in Windows called "Programs and Features"
This will bring up a list of programs.
Select "Ccleaner" and on the top bar, you have "Organize" and "Uninstall/Change"
Select "Uninstall/Change", click "Next" and you will find all those non-advertising pop-ups should stop.

You will probably have to block emails too, but this will definitely stop the non-advertising-advertising pop-ups.

You are then free to download the free version of Ccleaner, or one of the multitude of better programs out there that are still in the spirit of the original Ccleaner

Hope this helps someone.
You're Welcome ;)

[KTX]

Hello Dave CCleaner,

I have to agree with the other customers who are complaining about the popup.  Out of all the software I have installed, yours is the only one that has any form of popups.  My other software either places a notification in the software when opening in an un-annoying way or sends a notification email from an address that is for renewals only.  The latter allows the customer to move advertising emails from subscription emails.   Give us the option or develop an un-annoying way to inform your customers within the software.  CCleaner was suggested to me by a Tech Support company, and now that same company is removing it from their clients' PCs.  I loved CCleaner in the past but now at a point of reevaluating the software.

[Roger Cc]

On 15/03/2021 at 23:04, Dave CCleaner said:

Note that those are not ads.  The example you gave was of a loyalty discount offer in a renewal reminder related to your subscription because you are coming up to expiry at some point in the near future.  From a couple of months before expiry you'd be getting a reminder about every 2 weeks - although when there is a special limited-time promotional discount available you may get 3-4 in the space of a week.

If you are receiving renewal reminders more frequently than this, then (unless you are very close to your expiry date) the most common source of such overmessaging is if you have accidentally configured CCleaner to wipe the "I have already seen this message and I don't need to see it again" flag as a result of removing too many things from the cookie cleaning whitelist.  The fix for this is to go to Options > Cookies in the CCleaner console, right click in "Cookies to Keep", select Import and import the cookies.txt attached here - which should resolve that problem for you.

cookies.txt 134 B · 51 downloads

If you are getting other notifications relating to CCleaner having found something to clean that you don't want to be notified about, that is configurable through Options > Smart Cleaning.

Those privacy settings relate to data processing rather than notifications, per se.  That said, a few times a year we may offer discounts on CCleaner Professional to free users (usually as 1-3 notifications per campaign, depending on how long it is running for), and those who uncheck that "See possible upgrades and offers for our other products by sharing app-usage data with us" will generally not see most of these.

If you are in the US, Piriform has not changed the price for a 1 PC licence of CCleaner Professional from US$25 since it first went on sale ~10 years ago.  For users with multiple PCs, the CCleaner Professional Plus bundle for $40 was boosted to support up to 3 PCs back in May 2019.  We understand that not all of our users can afford CCleaner Professional, which is why we have an ongoing commitment to always offer a free version of CCleaner, along with our other performance and privacy tools.

Advertisement : a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event

That is literary an ad, call it whatever you want, it's still an ad. The goal of this popup is to push you to subscribe, that's why it's a popup, that's why it's tough to get rid of. If it was just a "reminder" it'd have appeared one time within ccleaner, not every two weeks for months, and not as a popup with a big blue button to subscribe and a tiny "no thanks" in grey. I was looking for help here, but nothing worked, ccleaner ISN'T even in my windows startup list, but it's still appearing and advertising me .

Edited October 28, 2023 by Roger Cc

[michaelsmithvegas]

I Will not be renewing this software because of this.

However If a moderator / administrator wants to offer me 5 years at $11.98 a year, ($60 total) without nagging me each year. Please feel free to message me.

Edited January 29 by michaelsmithvegas

[sjs94704]

On 11/04/2022 at 03:18, Dave CCleaner said:

Well not quite.  For customers who are not on autobilling it is quite reasonable to let them know in advance that they need to take some action to avoid having their service cut-off.   To ensure that customers on autobilling are not at any disadvantage (such as yourself, as your subscription for CCleaner Professional Plus was due to be billed to your credit card in about a month), we periodically make offers available to renew at a lower price.  For customers who forgot they they had a CCleaner subscription that they may not want to have billed for whatever reason, this also serves as an additional advance reminder to cancel prior to their upcoming billing date.

For customers who do not wish to receive so many service notifications, back in 2020 we added an option under Options > Privacy > Offers that reduces their frequency.  For example, the notification that you received this morning that the current offer was about to end would not have appeared for you, as a customer with automatic billing in place and a month still to go, if you had had that box unchecked.

Dave, I'm afraid you are fighting a losing battle to attempt to justify all of the ADVERTISING you are doing on the screen while people are using your products!  Clearly there is a problem if you just look at the comments! If you just ignore the comments and continue to post replies that argue contrary to how people actually feel then at some point you will no longer have a company because there will be a lot of people who will not renew with you because of all of these popups called advertising! You can try to dance around words and semantics as much as you want, but advertising is advertising no matter how it is packaged!

So, I think it is time to really start to listen to your customers and maybe email them vs put all this crap on the screen that just serves to annoy everyone!

Until you learn to listen to your customers better you will be doomed to eventual failure!

[nukecad]

Why do people get so upset about advertising?
Why do they waste their time complainging? just ignore it and move on, the same as with any other advertising.

ALL PRODUCTS ADVERTISE, everything you own, everything you use, everything you eat or drink, it all has advertising.

It's entirely your choice if you use a particuar product or not, and why.
However you stop using every product that advertises, just because it advertises, then you are soon going to be cold and hungry.

PS. Do you write a letter to the advertiser complaining about every piece of junk mail that comes to your house? Or every advert that you see on your TV? or even other advertising on your computer such as the stuff Microsoft bombards you with or the advertising in your browser.
No, I thought not, just ignore ALL advertising and move on.

For a bit of fun: https://thecomplainingcow.co.uk/10-types-of-complainer-which-are-you/

[hazelnut]

If you have selected everything that should turn the sales popups off and it still does it, that is not advertising in my eyes.

 

[Andavari]

It may not be technically adverts if everything in CCleaner that's possible to disable it, but pop-ups in general coming from software will anger allot of people, especially if it's from a disk cleaning tool that would normally not announce its presence at all if not opened directly by the user.