SpywareWatchdog/articles/ccleaner.html

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        <img src="../images/ccleaner_logo.png" alt="CCleaner Logo"/>
        <h1>CCleaner</h1>
        <p>CCleaner, developed by Piriform, is a utility program used to clean potentially unwanted files and invalid Windows Registry entries from a computer.</p>
        <h2>Spyware Level: <span class="red">EXTREMELY HIGH</span></h2>
        <p> CCleaner is spyware that collects your personal information to advertise to you. It also sells your information to third parties so that they can advertise to you. It collects a huge amount of very personal information, like your <b><span class="red">physical location</span></b>. CCleaner uses the technique of privacy policy obfuscation where it provides one privacy policy for every single product its company offers, making it more difficult to know what parts of the privacy policy apply to which program.</p>
        <h3>CCleaner collects and sells user information to advertisers</h3>
        <p> CCleaner clearly shows in its privacy settings that it is collecting information about your computer and selling that information to advertisers. Below is a screenshot on how to mitigate some of it.</p>
        <img class="screenshot" src="../images/ccleaner_privacy.png" alt="CCleaner privacy settings"/>
        <p>Image Source: <sup><a href="#s2">[2]</a></sup></p>
        <h3>CCleaner tracks a huge amount of personal information</h3>
        <p> If we look at the privacy policy, we can see that CCleaner reports the following<sup><a href="#s3">[3]</a></sup>:</p>
        <ul>
          <li>IP Address</li>
          <li>Unique User ID</li>
          <li>Operating System</li>
          <li>Other Avast Products installed</li>
          <li><b><span class="red">physical location</span></b></li>
        </ul>
        <p>Beyond this, CCleaner is integrated with the following spyware platforms, which all collect their own sets of information:</p>
        <ul>
          <li>Google Analytics</li>
          <li>Logentries</li>
        </ul>
        <p>It would be very time-consuming to go through all of those privacy policies (especially because many of these are obfuscated), but it should be enough to understand that CCleaner is full of third party spyware, as well as first party spyware.</p>
        <h3>CCleaner sends you spam email</h3>
        <p>From the privacy policy<sup><a href="#s3">[3]</a></sup>:</p>
        <p><i>"When we collect your email address, we may market our other products and services to you. You may choose to unsubscribe from future email marketing by following the instructions in the email."</i></p>
        <h3>CCleaner tracks your physical location</h3>
        <p>According to the privacy policy, the CCleaner website tries to track your physical location.<sup><a href="#s3">[3]</a></sup></p>
        <p><i>"Our websites use cookies to acquire data that may be used to determine your physical location via your Internet Protocol address (“IP Address”) and automated geolocation techniques, or to acquire basic information about the computer, tablet, or mobile phone that you use to visit us."</i></p>
        <p><i>"location data"</i> is also mentioned when talking about the information that CCleaner itself collects about its users.</p>
        <h3>Past Security Flaws</h3>
        <p>In the past, CCleaner has been compromised and backdoors have been added to it.<sup><a href="#s1">[1]</a></sup></p>
      </div>
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        <div class="sources">
          <h4>Sources:</h4>
          <ol>
            <li id="s1"><a href="https://www.ccleaner.com/news/blog/2017/9/18/security-notification-for-ccleaner-v5336162-and-ccleaner-cloud-v1073191-for-32-bit-windows-users">Security Notification for CCleaner v5.33.6162 and CCleaner Cloud v1.07.3191 for 32-bit Windows users</a> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180816103218/https://www.ccleaner.com/news/blog/2017/9/18/security-notification-for-ccleaner-v5336162-and-ccleaner-cloud-v1073191-for-32-bit-windows-users">[web.archive.org]</a> <a href="https://archive.is/UqWcU">[archive.is]</a></li>
            <li id="s2"><a href="https://misdirectedrequest.wordpress.com/2018/06/04/ccleaner-privacy-issue/">CCleaner Privacy Issue</a> <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20180821215956/https://misdirectedrequest.wordpress.com/2018/06/04/ccleaner-privacy-issue/">[web.archive.org]</a> <a href="https://archive.is/HJFBP">[archive.is]</a> <a href="https://ghostarchive.org/archive/30k0A">[ghostarchive.org]</a></li>
            <li id="s3"><a href="http://www.ccleaner.com/about/privacy-policy">What Happens to Your Data</a> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180816025428/https://www.ccleaner.com/about/privacy-policy">[web.archive.org]</a> <a href="http://archive.is/DFJTA">[archive.is]</a> <a href="https://ghostarchive.org/archive/nYo9M?kreymer=false">[ghostarchive.org]</a></li>
          </ol>
        </div>
        <hr/>
        <b>This article was last edited on 8/21/2018</b>
        <p>If you want to edit this article, or contribute your own article(s), visit us at the git repo on <a href="https://codeberg.org/shadow/SpywareWatchdog">Codeberg</a>.</p>
        <p>All contributions must be licensed under the CC0 license to be accepted.</p>
        <a href="../LICENSE.txt"><img class="icon" src="../images/cc0.png" alt="CC0 License"/></a>
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Update articles to new design 1 2020-07-25 12:33:15 +03:00			`<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">`
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Full restyling articles Part 1 2022-04-22 09:54:58 +03:00			`<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="application/xhtml+xml;charset=utf-8"/>`
			`<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"/>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`<title>CCleaner — Spyware Watchdog</title>`
Correction stylesheet <link> tag 2022-04-21 12:59:56 +03:00			`<link rel="stylesheet" href="../style.css"/>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`</head>`
			`<body>`
			`<div class="case">`
			`<div class="nav"><a href="index.html">← Catalog</a></div>`
			`<div class="main">`
Removed extra spaces in single tags Like `<img ... />` to `<img .../>`. 2022-04-21 13:13:46 +03:00			`<img src="../images/ccleaner_logo.png" alt="CCleaner Logo"/>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`<h1>CCleaner</h1>`
Full restyling articles Part 1 2022-04-22 09:54:58 +03:00			`<p>CCleaner, developed by Piriform, is a utility program used to clean potentially unwanted files and invalid Windows Registry entries from a computer.</p>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`<h2>Spyware Level: <span class="red">EXTREMELY HIGH</span></h2>`
Full restyling articles Part 1 2022-04-22 09:54:58 +03:00			<p> CCleaner is spyware that collects your personal information to advertise to you. It also sells your information to third parties so that they can advertise to you. It collects a huge amount of very personal information, like your <b><span class="red">physical location</span></b>. CCleaner uses the technique of privacy policy obfuscation where it provides one privacy policy for every single product its company offers, making it more difficult to know what parts of the privacy policy apply to which program.</p>
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`<h3>CCleaner collects and sells user information to advertisers</h3>`
Full restyling articles Part 1 2022-04-22 09:54:58 +03:00			`<p> CCleaner clearly shows in its privacy settings that it is collecting information about your computer and selling that information to advertisers. Below is a screenshot on how to mitigate some of it.</p>`
			`<img class="screenshot" src="../images/ccleaner_privacy.png" alt="CCleaner privacy settings"/>`
			`<p>Image Source: <sup><a href="#s2">[2]</a></sup></p>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`<h3>CCleaner tracks a huge amount of personal information</h3>`
Full restyling articles Part 1 2022-04-22 09:54:58 +03:00			`<p> If we look at the privacy policy, we can see that CCleaner reports the following<sup><a href="#s3">[3]</a></sup>:</p>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`<ul>`
			`<li>IP Address</li>`
			`<li>Unique User ID</li>`
			`<li>Operating System</li>`
			`<li>Other Avast Products installed</li>`
Full restyling articles Part 1 2022-04-22 09:54:58 +03:00			`<li><b><span class="red">physical location</span></b></li>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`</ul>`
Full restyling articles Part 1 2022-04-22 09:54:58 +03:00			`<p>Beyond this, CCleaner is integrated with the following spyware platforms, which all collect their own sets of information:</p>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`<ul>`
			`<li>Google Analytics</li>`
			`<li>Logentries</li>`
			`</ul>`
Full restyling articles Part 1 2022-04-22 09:54:58 +03:00			`<p>It would be very time-consuming to go through all of those privacy policies (especially because many of these are obfuscated), but it should be enough to understand that CCleaner is full of third party spyware, as well as first party spyware.</p>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`<h3>CCleaner sends you spam email</h3>`
Full restyling articles Part 1 2022-04-22 09:54:58 +03:00			`<p>From the privacy policy<sup><a href="#s3">[3]</a></sup>:</p>`
			`<p><i>"When we collect your email address, we may market our other products and services to you. You may choose to unsubscribe from future email marketing by following the instructions in the email."</i></p>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`<h3>CCleaner tracks your physical location</h3>`
Full restyling articles Part 1 2022-04-22 09:54:58 +03:00			`<p>According to the privacy policy, the CCleaner website tries to track your physical location.<sup><a href="#s3">[3]</a></sup></p>`
			`<p><i>"Our websites use cookies to acquire data that may be used to determine your physical location via your Internet Protocol address (“IP Address”) and automated geolocation techniques, or to acquire basic information about the computer, tablet, or mobile phone that you use to visit us."</i></p>`
			`<p><i>"location data"</i> is also mentioned when talking about the information that CCleaner itself collects about its users.</p>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`<h3>Past Security Flaws</h3>`
Full restyling articles Part 1 2022-04-22 09:54:58 +03:00			`<p>In the past, CCleaner has been compromised and backdoors have been added to it.<sup><a href="#s1">[1]</a></sup></p>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`</div>`
Removed extra spaces in single tags Like `<img ... />` to `<img .../>`. 2022-04-21 13:13:46 +03:00			`<hr/>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`<div class="footer">`
			`<div class="sources">`
			`<h4>Sources:</h4>`
			`<ol>`
Full restyling articles Part 1 2022-04-22 09:54:58 +03:00			<li id="s1"><a href="https://www.ccleaner.com/news/blog/2017/9/18/security-notification-for-ccleaner-v5336162-and-ccleaner-cloud-v1073191-for-32-bit-windows-users">Security Notification for CCleaner v5.33.6162 and CCleaner Cloud v1.07.3191 for 32-bit Windows users</a> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180816103218/https://www.ccleaner.com/news/blog/2017/9/18/security-notification-for-ccleaner-v5336162-and-ccleaner-cloud-v1073191-for-32-bit-windows-users">[web.archive.org]</a> <a href="https://archive.is/UqWcU">[archive.is]</a></li>
			`<li id="s2"><a href="https://misdirectedrequest.wordpress.com/2018/06/04/ccleaner-privacy-issue/">CCleaner Privacy Issue</a> <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20180821215956/https://misdirectedrequest.wordpress.com/2018/06/04/ccleaner-privacy-issue/">[web.archive.org]</a> <a href="https://archive.is/HJFBP">[archive.is]</a> <a href="https://ghostarchive.org/archive/30k0A">[ghostarchive.org]</a></li>`
			`<li id="s3"><a href="http://www.ccleaner.com/about/privacy-policy">What Happens to Your Data</a> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180816025428/https://www.ccleaner.com/about/privacy-policy">[web.archive.org]</a> <a href="http://archive.is/DFJTA">[archive.is]</a> <a href="https://ghostarchive.org/archive/nYo9M?kreymer=false">[ghostarchive.org]</a></li>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`</ol>`
			`</div>`
Removed extra spaces in single tags Like `<img ... />` to `<img .../>`. 2022-04-21 13:13:46 +03:00			`<hr/>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`<b>This article was last edited on 8/21/2018</b>`
Full restyling articles Part 1 2022-04-22 09:54:58 +03:00			`<p>If you want to edit this article, or contribute your own article(s), visit us at the git repo on <a href="https://codeberg.org/shadow/SpywareWatchdog">Codeberg</a>.</p>`
			`<p>All contributions must be licensed under the CC0 license to be accepted.</p>`
			`<a href="../LICENSE.txt"><img class="icon" src="../images/cc0.png" alt="CC0 License"/></a>`
Replaced all tabs (\t) with 2 spaces 2022-04-21 12:16:26 +03:00			`</div>`
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Update articles to new design 1 2020-07-25 12:33:15 +03:00			`</html>`