CCleaner Taken Down Following Outrage Over Data Collection

• The v5.45 release of CCleaner forced users to leave Active Monitoring on, which allows the app to send anonymous data to Piriform’s servers.
• The forced data collection caused a lot of outrage, and the developers had to take down the latest version of the app.
• Users who tried disabling the feature noticed that Active Monitoring would be auto-enabled upon restart.

With user privacy concerns at an all-time high, software developer Piriform has found itself in troubled waters yet again. CCleaner’s latest update included its highly controversial Active Monitoring feature which allows the developers to collect anonymous user data using the app with no option of disabling it. Active Monitoring has been around for quite some time, but users always had the option of disabling it, which was not true for the latest 5.45 build of the app.

Users who attempted to disable the app noticed that the feature would turn itself ON upon restarting the app. It let to a lot of outrage, and the latest version of the app has been taken down by Piriform. Version 5.45 also had another bug which would prevent CCleaner from terminating once users closed the app. The only way to close the app was by using the Task Manager.

Image Courtesy of CCleaner

Piriform pulled the app from its download page with 5.44 being the latest available version of the app which can be downloaded right now. The developers responded to the situation stating “We’re currently working on separating out cleaning functionality from analytics reporting and offering more user control options which will be remembered when CCleaner is closed. We’re also creating a fact sheet to share which will outline the data we collect, for which purposes and how it is processed.”

The software is set to receive numerous changes including split cleaning alerts which do not send any data to CCleaner servers. There will be more expansive settings that users can access to fully control data collection. It will take a few weeks until a new 5.46 version of the app is released with all of the promised features.

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