Piriform (Avast) has provided following statement to The Hacker News:
#Free ccleaner download software update#
So, users are recommended to hold off on upgrading their software to version 5.45 until the new update is available to download.įor those who have already upgraded their software to version 5.45 can disable Active Monitoring by forcefully terminating CCleaner using the Task Manager or third-party process management software for a while until the next version arrives. "We will take this opportunity to rename the Advanced Monitoring features in CCleaner to make their functions clearer."Īvast said the company will roll out these changes in the coming weeks. "We will separate out Active Monitoring (junk cleaning alerts and browser cleaning alerts), and heartbeat (anonymous usage analytics) features in the UI, and we will give you the ability to control these individually," the company said. In response to the users' complaints about Active Monitoring, Avast said on its forum that the company will offer separate menu items for turning off Active Monitoring and sending anonymous usage data (heartbeat). "We reserve the right to store and use the information collected by our software and to share such information among the Avast Group to improve our current and future products and services, to help us develop new products and services, and to better understand the behavior of our users."Īvast Promises to Fix CCleaner Privacy Issues We may publish or share that information with third parties that are not part of the Avast Group, but we will only ever do so after anonymizing the data," CCleaner's privacy policy says. "We reserve the right to store and use the information collected by our software. Moreover, CCleaner's privacy policy also says that it can share collected information with 3rd party companies. Though the information CCleaner gathers is entirely anonymous, users on various internet forums expressed their concerns about Avast data sharing practice, saying that the company ruined their favorite tool after acquiring it. When asked about it on its forum, CCleaner said heartbeat sends only "non-personal, absolutely non-identifiable usage information to improve CCleaner." In its changelog for CCleaner 5.45, Avast notes it "added more detailed reporting for bug fixes and product improvements."īesides this, CCleaner now also sends a heartbeat every 12 hours which reports up-to-date usage statistics to Avast, allowing the company to faster deliver bug fixes and product improvements. What's concerning is that even after turning off the Active Monitoring feature from CCleaner's menus, it turns back ON automatically whenever users reboot their computer or close the software. These monitoring elements of CCleaner send user data such as anonymous system usage data back to the company's servers, as well as continuously scan systems to inform users when it comes across any junk or browser file, as first reported by Techdows. CCleaner 5.45 released in July-forces Active Monitoring and heartbeat features.CCleaner 5.44 released in June-adds pop-up advertisements.