Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Et Tu, CCleaner!

<< < (2/6) > >>

rjbull:
As a long time user of CCleaner, I now feel it's time to look for a replacement.

Suggestions?-xtabber (August 06, 2018, 06:38 AM)
--- End quote ---

BleachBit?
When your computer is getting full, BleachBit quickly frees disk space. When your information is only your business, BleachBit guards your privacy. With BleachBit you can free cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn't know was there. Designed for Linux and Windows systems, it wipes clean thousands of applications including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari,and more. Beyond simply deleting files, BleachBit includes advanced features such as shredding files to prevent recovery, wiping free disk space to hide traces of files deleted by other applications, and vacuuming Firefox to make it faster. Better than free, BleachBit is open source.
--- End quote ---
Endorsed, I believe, by the team of a certain famous Democrat  ;)

4wd:
Hasn't been mentioned but CCleaner 5.46 goes a little way towards ameliorating the indiscretions of v5.45.

Privacy Settings

* The Monitoring feature and reporting of anonymous usage data can now be controlled separately (previously both were controlled by the ‘Active Monitoring’ checkbox)
* Added a separate control for the reporting of anonymous usage data
* Added a link to a Data Factsheet, which explains the data reported from CCleaner, why it’s reported, and what it’s used for (in summary, CCleaner only reports anonymous, statistical data for the purposes of maintaining and improving the app, and it does not report any personal information)
Smart Cleaning

* Renamed the ‘Monitoring’ feature to ‘Smart Cleaning’, to better describe its purpose (intelligent cleaning alerts) and underline the fact that it does not report usage data
* Reworded the ‘System Monitoring’ checkbox to ‘Tell me when there are junk files to clean’
* Reworded the ‘Browser Monitoring’ checkbox to ‘Enable automatic browser cleaning’
* Reworded the ‘Active Monitoring’ checkbox to ‘Enable Smart Cleaning’
* If Smart Cleaning is disabled, CCleaner’s background process will close and the feature will not run on startup (same behavior as in v5.44)
--- End quote ---

The above is just the relevant part of the change log, there's also various fixes, etc.

They tell you exactly what is reported in their Data Factsheet.

IainB:
Having shelled out for a CCleaner Pro licence some time back, after using the $FREE version for years, I was singularly unimpressed when Avast-Piriform (the developers) started to implement the persistent snooping functionality. Sure, the user could disable it, after a fashion, but next update (or sooner) it was mysteriously "re-enabled" at StartUp, ha-ha.
They had simply gone too far to deserve the user's trust anymore and they will regret it. It seems to have backfired on them already, so they are now belatedly apparently overtly walking back the spyware aspects that they had earlier deliberately introduced so covertly.

Anyway, on the principle of "once bitten, twice shy" and "can't trust 'em", I promptly added the unreliable CCleaner software process(es)to my ProcessTamer "Force Kill" list, so that the only time CCleaner can run now is if/when I have disabled ProcessTamer first.
ProcessTamer is running all the time otherwise, and is very reliable, successfully annihilating inefficient, or persistenly nosy annoyware processes from Microsoft, Avast-Piriform and others.
ProcessTamer really does help the user to run a tight ship.    :Thmbsup:

Tuxman:
BleachBit has become pretty mature by this point.

IainB:
@Tuxman:
BleachBit has become pretty mature by this point.
-Tuxman (September 09, 2018, 06:39 AM)
--- End quote ---
Ah, thanks for that pointer. I didn't know much about BleachBit except for reading somewhere that an early version of it it had apparently been used by the Guardian (UK) reporter(s) who had worked on the Snowdengate exposé, to cover their tracks, or something. I didn't realise that it had become "a mature product" now. So, I decided to read up on it. My first stop was on Wikipedia - BleachBit - where it gives quite a thorough run-down on the software (e.g., it's written in Python with cleaner modules written in CleanerML) and devotes a whole section to "Controversies":
Controversies
In August 2016, Republican U.S. Congressman Trey Gowdy announced that he had seen notes from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), taken during an investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails, that stated that Clinton's staff had used BleachBit to delete emails from her private server.[13][14] After the announcement, BleachBit's company website reportedly received increased traffic.[15][16]

In October 2016, the FBI released edited documents from their Clinton email investigation.[17] In part 3 of this release, on page 24, the FBI reports that Clinton aide Cheryl Mills ordered Platte River Networks employee Paul Combetta[18] to delete the emails and approved the use of BleachBit. When questioned by the House Oversight Committee, Combetta invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to testify.[18]

On Sep 12, 2017, the courts in Maryland ordered a proper investigation into three of Hillary Clinton's attorneys accused of deleting emails using BleachBit who are accused of deleting thousands of her emails.[19][20][21]
Copied from: BleachBit - Wikipedia - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BleachBit>

--- End quote ---
I hadn't realised that BleachBit was so controversial and so popular and recommended for use within the US government state department(s) and for sterilising government officials' and politicians' personal email servers!    :o
That's some recommendation - right there. It must be good - no?   :tellme:

From Wikipedia I followed the link to the BleachBit.org website, where the first thing one sees is rather droll:
Et Tu, CCleaner!

Enuff said, I'm gonna trial that software now, though I hasten to add that I'm not so much interested in "covering my tracks" as I am in simply clearing the cruft out of my laptop's system and keeping it efficient.
Again thanks for the pointer. BleachBit could make the difference, as it seems to be categorically focused on user privacy, which seems to be something that Avast-Piriform/CCleaner is categorically focused on breaching, now (QED).
As I said,  "Once bitten, twice shy".

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page