How do I stop CCleaner's license renewal notifications?

[Gamma Cephei]

I have a CCleaner subscription that expires in a week. I cancelled the subscription auto-renewal several weeks ago, however CCleaner still keeps sending daily notifications to my Windows desktop reminding me how many days left until my subscription expires. How do I stop these notifications?

Also, FYI, after cancelling my subscription, ccleaner.payments.donation@gmail.com subsequently sent an invoice to my PayPal account anyway. Not cool.

 

[hazelnut]

Try Options ...Privacy

[Dave CCleaner]

2 hours ago, Gamma Cephei said:

I have a CCleaner subscription that expires in a week. I cancelled the subscription auto-renewal several weeks ago, however CCleaner still keeps sending daily notifications to my Windows desktop reminding me how many days left until my subscription expires.

The assumption is that if you still have CCleaner Professional installed then you still intend to keep using it.  So if you have no billing method still enabled and you're only a few days left from expiry, then it will pop up every 2 days (from 3 to 9 days before expiry) reminding you have you have X days before your service is cut off.  If you do indeed intend to continue using CCleaner Professional, you might want to do something about extending your licence.  If not, you can uninstall CCleaner Professional and reinstall the free version from the website.

2 hours ago, Gamma Cephei said:

Also, FYI, after cancelling my subscription, ccleaner.payments.donation@gmail.com subsequently sent an invoice to my PayPal account anyway. Not cool.

Very not cool.  Since I am pretty sure that is not us.  Before CCleaner starting selling home licences, about a decade or so ago, there was a PayPal donate button, but that was to an @piriform.com email address. Cleverbridge handles our billing and would be emailing invoices from an @cleverbridge.com email address.  Neither of these were random gmail addresses.  @Gamma Cephei: could you DM me the details of the PayPal email that you received please?  

[Gamma Cephei]

Hi Dave, thank you for your prompt response. I love CCleaner, have been using it for years. I just found the constant reminders annoying. I DM'd you the requested details.

[nukecad]

@Gamma Cephei Let Dave continue to help you, but this 'software renewal scam' is a well know phishing tactic.

There is an article about it at Malwarebytes labs if you are interested. (Malwarebytes is another 'big name' that the phishers use for this scam).
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/2021/03/software-renewal-scammers-unmasked/

Sorry if you got caught by a scam like this.
About the one comfort you can take is that if CCleaner wasn't a trusted name then the phishers wouldn't have tried using it to scam you.
As said Dave will be able to look into things a bit deeper for you.

[Gamma Cephei]

@nukecad thank you for the response and link. What's odd about the CCleaner "scam" is that the invoice was sent directly to my PayPal account _and_ within two weeks of my CCleaner subscription expiring. While I get plenty of e-mail renewal scams, I've never before had an unexpected invoice sent directly to my PayPal account, nor one so relevant to a product up for renewal. This alleged scammer appeared to have a surprising amount of information regarding my CCleaner account.

[nukecad]

You might want to check if your email has been compromised, there's a free checker at haveIbeedpwned.
https://haveibeenpwned.com/
There is a password checker as well to check if anybody has your passwords.
https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords

They have just had a big update with 225 million new compromised emails and passwords that have been donated by the UK police:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59730010

[Nerph]

@Dave CCleaner my apologies for tagging you, but just a few moments ago I also received a PayPal invoice with the email showing as "ccleaner.payments.donation@gmail.com". I too have had CCleaner Pro which will expire on 27th January 2022, but I'm pretty certain I cancelled auto-renewal (I'm not sure how to check as I no longer have CCleaner installed).

Would you like me to DM you the email information regarding this PayPal invoice as well?

Kind regards,

Nerph

Edit: Also quite intriguing, the "Note to customer" on the PayPal invoice is in Dutch, my native language.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Nerph

[Dave CCleaner]

On 12/01/2022 at 05:54, Nerph said:

"ccleaner.payments.donation@gmail.com"

@Nerph: This is absolutely 100% not us.  Piriform does not use gmail, hotmail or other free email providers for any official communications.  And it has been over a decade now since CCleaner Professional licences worked on a donation system.  We used to use piriform.com email domain (the name of the company), although over time we have moved most things to ccleaner.com domain (the name of our best-known brand).

We have had several enquiries from our customers about these paypal scam emails - asking why they would be getting unsolicited invoices for payment when they have either a) already renewed with us, b) aren't due to expire for several months or c) aren't even actually a customer of ours at all!  If you think you have fallen victim to one of these, you can ask CCleaner customer support (support@ccleaner.com) to verify the authenticity of the order reference number and other payment information, and (if you mistakenly paid a fraudulent invoice) file a dispute with PayPal (https://www.paypal.com/bb/smarthelp/topic/DISPUTES_ CLAIMS_PROTECTIONS).

Important to note that the PayPal dispute process should only be used for scams.  if you need a refund on a genuine CCleaner purchase, the team at support@ccleaner.com can handle those for you promptly. 

For reference, with regards to genuine subscription-related emails sent to customers by us:

• You may get renewal reminders sent by us from a ccleaner.com email address - these will not take the form of an invoice or a request for payment, but rather an offer to renew at a discounted price. 
• Any email sent by us relating to a subscription will include information about your licence that only we and you should know - such as your licence key and/or expiry date.
• We sometimes put pricing in the emails, but usually not - although may have a record of your preferred language, we do not always know your country.  For example a French-speaker may be in France (Euros), Canada (Canadian dollars), Switzerland (Swiss Francs), Jersey (GBP), etc.
• Generally speaking, if there is an email relating to a subscription renewal or renewal offer from us, it would be a followup to a notification message that you would have received from the CCleaner product itself at around the same time.
• For the email or the notification, the call-to-action will be a link to a ccleaner.com web page or shopping cart where you can check the pricing and/or make a selection from a range of options before making a purchasing decision.  Never an invitation to pay money directly to someone without going through some sort of online checkout process first.

Note that as we do not process payments ourselves, you may also receive billing-related notifications from our online billing provider, Cleverbridge:

• If you have automatic renewal billing on, an email from no-reply@cleverbridge.com, reminding you approximately 2 weeks before the billing takes place and with links to update your payment information or to cancel future billing.
• After a payment has been received, an email receipt from no-reply@cleverbridge.com
• If something goes wrong with a payment, a notification that you need to either update your payment information, complete a secure payment authentication as required by your credit card provider, or complete your purchase if you have chosen an offline payment method.

 

[muddie]

I think there there is a new scam for CCleaner at the moment 

It shows you a fake licence key , wrong expiry date and you get a free bonus VPN when you sign up and when you go to pay for it the payment fails and then asks for your login details

[hazelnut]

1 minute ago, muddie said:

I think there there is a new scam for CCleaner at the moment 

It shows you a fake licence key , wrong expiry date and you get a free bonus VPN when you sign up and when you go to pay for it the payment fails and then asks for your login details

Where do you see a fake licence key? On a website? If so which website?

Can you give more precise details?

[muddie]

Attachment removed for security - Nukecad

[hazelnut]

You will have to upload it in a different format as I cannot open it.

Is it an email? Who from?

Can you screenshot it?

[muddie]

5 hours ago, hazelnut said:

You will have to upload it in a different format as I cannot open it.

Is it an email? Who from?

Can you screenshot it?

Attachment removed for security - Nukecad

 

[hazelnut]

You are uploading the attachment as an .eml file which I cannot open.

Can you not take a screenshot of the message and upload it as as jpeg or png file?

[nukecad]

@hazelnut It opens for me with the built in Windows mail app, try associating .eml with mail

@muddieDon't post either one - but are you saying that the key in that email is not your key.

Sorry I have to rush out for an hour or two (UC appointment so I can't miss it)- Hazelnut you may want to remove those attachments once you have got the key details

[nukecad]

@hazelnutI've now posted the original .eml fie and a conversion to PDF in the secure staff area.

Because it contains a licence key (whether real or not) I'll remove the copies from here.

@muddiedo you by any chance have more than one licence key?

[Dave CCleaner]

@muddie; I received a screenshot copy of your email and it would appear genuine.  I would note the following important attributes:

• This is the campaign (two years of CCleaner Premium for the price of one, after cashback, with a bonus VPN) that is currently active for pre-expiry customers. If you are using CCleaner on your laptop then you should have received a notification of this campaign as well.
• When you went to "view in browser" I note that the URL is https://email.ccleaner.com - which is us.
• The link that you clicked on in the email should have gone to the campaign landing page hosted at https://www.ccleaner.com/ ... which, if so, is also us.
• The email contains your name (in lower case, since I guess that was how you entered it when you bought a two year subscription back in April 2020) as well as your current active licence key and your expiry date:

11 hours ago, muddie said:

It shows you a fake licence key , wrong expiry date

I looked it up and that is indeed your correct and current licence key and expiry date for the licence key associated with the email address that you used to register on the forum.  You can confirm this by going to https://www.ccleaner.com/support/license-lookup and entering your email address to get any licences with it.

Might you have a more recent licence key that you bought using a different identity?  Our systems do not attempt to guess if mr_barry_smith@work and bazza@gmail are the same person - so it is not uncommon for customers who swap between multiple email addresses to end up with multiple licences.

11 hours ago, muddie said:

when you go to pay for it the payment fails and then asks for your login details

Do you have a screenshot of that screen?  If you elected to pay via PayPal, was that PayPal asking you to verify yourself with them to complete the transaction?