New to CCleaner - Nag/Privacy Issues

[Embeeous]

Hi, I'm brand new to CCleaner.  I decided to give it a try after my regular Windows Disk Management utilities seemed to take forever or didn't work at all.  Loaded it up on two computers.  The first thing that I noticed was the huge amount of cross sell, nag screens, internal advertising to get you to move to Pro, use this, use that, seemed like I had to bypass a lot just to do a simple scan and analysis, which it did fast and well.  So I decided to keep it and just manually do it every few months. 

Not so fast. 

Even with basic adjustments to settings, it seems to do a lot on its own, both in the foreground and in the background.  A couple of times it fired up on its own with Windows startup, I'm guessing to look for updates which I can't figure out how to shut off or just turn to manual.  And with that unsolicited start up, I get the associated nag screens to do this, buy that, not a great look from a free disk cleaner that I use once in a while. 

The last straw might be the attached - I noticed CCleaner trying to make changes to this folder several times last night, and when I did a little further searching, it's trying to do stuff all of the time.  I let the CC Cleaner Updater have that permission but now I'm rethinking this whole thing.  The irony of an application that is designed to protect me from the very things that I am encountering while using it is not lost on me.  All kidding aside, unless someone can tell me real fast how to turn some or all of this nagging and intrusiveness off, I'm just going to delete this program altogether.  I would gladly contact CCleaner support directly on this, but evidently, that doesn't exist either.  

That's two strikes :)

Thanks. 

[nukecad]

Hi, Let's see if I can answer some of that.

Nags:
They are what they are and all freeware contains them.
Once you have seen each of the nags it shouldn't show you it again for a while (but may show a different new offer if there is one).
However some people clear out CCleaners own cookies, (either by changing settings in CCleaner itself or using another cleaner), and if/when they do that CCleaner doesn't know that it has already shown the nag so will show it again.

Of course buying a Pro licence will stop most of it.
You'll still get reminders and cut price offers when your licence is due for renewal.

CCleaner doing things on it's own, running at startup:
A few settings can do that in CCleaner Free. (more in Pro).

• If you have Options>Settings>"Run a one time clean with the Custom Clean tool when you start Windows" ticked then it will do just that.
• Options>Smart Cleaning if enabled will run in the background and ocassionaly clear built up junk. It will put a CCleaner icon in your system tray.
• Options>Updates>"Keep CCleaner updated automatically" if ticked also runs in the background, and will put the icon in the tray.

None of those should open the CCleaner window though, they run in the background.
I'm not sure what the defaults are in the Free version these days, but think that both Smart Cleaning and Automatic updates are on by default - You can turn them off if you don't want that.
As you say an automatic check for updates might fetch back a 'limited time/low price' offer to upgrade to pro. (Not sure but I could easily see it doing that).

Controlled Folder Access:
CFA is off by default in Windows, you have to turn it on yourself.
I turned CFA on a long time ago when it first came out; and quickly turned it off again because it was always causing problems, throwing up false positives and stopping non-Microsoft apps from working properly.

CFA is a bit of a nanny who likes to keep you 'safe' by never allowing you to do anything that a grown-up might do.
It will often block cleaners, Antivirus apps, and other grown-up, serious, software from accessing folders that it doesn't think a 'dummy' user should access.
(MS don't think much of their customers intelligence, or of any app not written by MS).
It's even been know to stop Microsoft's own software, and sometimes the Windows operating system, from accessing folders that they need to.

Microsoft themselves say:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/allow-an-app-to-access-controlled-folders-b5b6627a-b008-2ca2-7931-7e51e912b034
 

Quote

Occasionally, an app that is safe to use will be identified as harmful. This happens because Microsoft wants to keep you safe and will sometimes err on the side of caution; however, this might interfere with how you normally use your PC. You can add an app to the list of safe or allowed apps to prevent them from being blocked.

For 'Ocassionally' substitute 'Often' (In my experience anyway).
If you google- "\device\harddisk0\DRO folder" you'll find just some of the issues that turning on CFA can cause with that folder and others.

Of course it's your choice whether you want to keep CFA enabled or not.
If you want to keep CFA on but still let CCleaner do it's cleaning unhindered then you can make CCleaner an exception in CFA by adding it to the safe list, see that link above.

[redwolfe_98]

i've been using "ccleaner" for 17 years, the free version, and i've never had any issues with it. i run "ccleaner" multiple times per day, to clear the browser-caches, cookies, history, and anything else. i only use the "custom clean" option for cleaning.

in ccleaner's "options"/"privacy," you can turn off "see offers." you also can adjust other settings there, in ccleaner's "options."

[Dave CCleaner]

On 19/03/2022 at 13:46, nukecad said:

Once you have seen each of the nags it shouldn't show you it again for a while (but may show a different new offer if there is one).

On the free version, after you update (either manually or automatically) then after the post-update confirmation screen it might ask you if you want to buy today.  On average, happens every 2-3 months.  If there is a sale on then you might see a pop-up asking if you'd like to take advantage of the current discounted offer to buy.  Last sale was in January, so probably another one before the end of March.  Depending on the sale, the offer may appear only once or (during Black Friday, for example, a couple of times).

On 19/03/2022 at 13:46, nukecad said:

However some people clear out CCleaners own cookies, (either by changing settings in CCleaner itself or using another cleaner), and if/when they do that CCleaner doesn't know that it has already shown the nag so will show it again.

... unless you tell CCleaner to pretend it has not seen the message before.  Unless you really love hearing from us every day, we recommend against doing that.

On 19/03/2022 at 19:46, redwolfe_98 said:

in ccleaner's "options"/"privacy," you can turn off "see offers."

... and then you don't get any offers.  If you were never going to buy then there's no point in showing you offers.  If you do plan to buy and switch off the offers then you'll end up paying us more.  So having that setting available is a win-win ;-)

However, if you are using the free version and try clicking on a padlocked paid feature of CCleaner Professional then naturally it is not going to let you use it - it will generally give you the option to try it out for free as part of a 15 day (no credit card) trial though.

On 18/03/2022 at 11:58, Embeeous said:

I let the CC Cleaner Updater have that permission

Good decision - that's the emergency updater.  That's our fire alarm if, for example, Windows releases an update that will cause serious problems with older CCleaner versions. Standard updates are handled by CCleaner itself - which it sounds like you might still be blocking with CFA.  If you want to control this in a more elegant fashion, I would recommend using the Options > Updates setting in CCleaner itself.