Jump to content

cliftonprince

Members
  • Posts

    10
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation

0 Neutral

Recent Profile Visitors

858 profile views
  1. Am I correct in understanding that 5.46 still phones home even if certain settings are chosen which should not only (a) make it unnecessary but also (b) preclude it from doing so? Am I correct in understanding that 5.46's improvements to the problematic monitoring in 5.45 are, therefore, only half-improvements? I have tried to gather what information I could, from reading threads such as this one, but I'm not yet convinced that I should adopt 5.46 over 5.45. Right now, due to the issues with CCleaner version 5.45, I have retro-graded to 5.32, which I understand to be the last version released by Piriform before Avast took over. I think I'm staying with 5.32 ... or is 5.46 now "safe"?
  2. I do not wish to beat a dead horse. But, at the present moment, as CCleaner 5.45 is still "pulled", as 5.44 is still retroactively distributed without comment, as (presumed number) 5.46 has not appeared on the horizon, as the company has not addressed one of the major and central themes in this situation (pro-active breach of trust without warning or excuse), as standard distribution channels remain un-informed of the problem except in terms of silent version-number regress, as the company has left it up to independent outlets (such as journalists and community-forum participants) to communicate the problem to the company's own customers and patrons, as the company proceeds as though this is merely the cost of doing business, and as a growing number of new people post on these forums subsequent to the initiation of discussion threads, I therefore consider the horse to be quite alive and kicking. I beat it more: In my first post on the subject, I spoke as though this change were an unintended mistake which could be promptly remedied. Responses from the organization's representatives hint, to the contrary, that the change was implemented rather with full awareness of the technical consequences and also suggest (now, by implication) that it will take some time to unchange. The only consequences they seem to have failed to predict, were the opinions of users such as ourselves. And they have not yet demonstrated (to my personal satisfaction, at least) that they in any way regret having misled us to such a degree of our grave disappointment (whether or not that disappointment is reasonable; in re: the above suggestions that this is a case of ((implied, unreasonable)) "Fear Uncertainty and Doubt", as stated in this thread, with which I mildly disagree). Perhaps the company's successful retainer of so many otherwise unaware and oblivious customers (meaning, the number of users who are NOT on this forum complaining) leads them to a different conclusion than my own, about proper response to a breach of trust. As for the technical solution, I am guessing (now) that it's an architecture-type issue (perhaps based on the structural and conceptual underpinnings of the entire program's functions), rather than merely a settings issue (one for which a few additions to the user-interface could alleviate the problem). If it were merely about settings, and not about company policy and longer-term planning, then (I suspect) the fix would have been available for download by now, around two weeks later. Tweaking the user-interface to alter access to settings that are intended to be user-alter-able and that had been user-accessible in the past, is a task which should take about forty-five minutes, according to a software-engineering project manager of my acquaintance. We're going on two weeks and it's been a major kerfuffle, so I'm guessing there's something more to fixing it, than merely tweaking user access to a few old settings. Sad but true. I entirely agree with the above sentiment. If it is merely market-response (as in, number of SALES of product packages) that drives their decision-making in the matter, then it is already a grave concern. One does not breach trust merely in hopes it will not be noticed, or in hopes it will not overly negatively affect bottom-line consequences; that kind of choice belies the whole point of trust in the first place. One should address trust without any eye at all to market consequences; or else it is not, by definition, a question of trust; rather, it's merely a market question. Maybe this post has been excessive. I'm sorry if it is, though I hope I have been polite about it, for I raise points which I believe do bear raising. The circular epistemology of this situation -- a privacy organization breached my privacy more than would have any breach which they might have secured my privacy against -- leads me to believe that the FUD is justified, personally. Are they in league with ... whom? Sending my data to ... where? For ... what purposes? I now follow the developments more out of curiosity than out of any personal interest. I'm using CCleaner 5.32 (the last before Avast bought Piriform, I think?) and intend to migrate to a competitor permanently.
  3. In response to Donchik ... nope, your steps to disable Monitoring in 5.45 will not work, as far as I understand this situation. I do recognize that your labor-intensive and careful screenshots were presented in good faith, and I'm thankful that you're trying to share the kind of information that would usually be helpful. Sad to say, however, in this case, I do think that your suggested steps will have no beneficial effect. (One might even say that the steps could compound the problem rather than alleviate it, merely because the taking of those steps misleads some users into thinking the problem is solved when it is not.) The steps certainly do LOOK like they'll work, but the Monitoring will be re-instated despite such overt demands to the contrary. Or so I understand it. I may be wrong? It would be nicer if I were ... Anyway, the fact that they are so danged elaborate and yet still maybe don't work? That, in itself, is the nub of the problem -- not, as many users seem to infer, that there IS Monitoring going on or that CCleaner sets that monitoring by default to an ON state (though both of those facts are rather bad in themselves); rather, that the Monitoring CANNOT BE TURNED OFF, even if a user clicks an OFF button in any of several manners (an even worse fact than either of the previous two!). Rather than being able to turn it off by your steps or by any other procedure, instead, if the user is using CCleaner version 5.45, then the Monitoring simply cannot be turned off, period. A user must uninstall 5.45 (and I suggest a thorough Registry search, to delete all entries with any terms that might be related, such as "Piriform" and "CCleaner" and "Avast" and so on and on) and revert at least as far back as 5.44 to have such control over Monitoring. I further suggest, go back to a version of CCleaner that was released before the Avast company took them over. I'm vaguely approving of the fact that the company (Avast? CCleaner? Piriform?) has released statements saying they'll try to fix the problem, and that it has posted a helpful set of links for getting the previous version (personally I followed this link ... https://www.ccleaner.com/go/get_ccfree ... but I cannot attest to its authenticity or accuracy, since I haven't tried the software from it yet). I recommend that all forum participants read the statements from the user named Paul Piriform in this and related threads. I am not elated at the fix, I'm simply glad that the problem didn't go utterly totally ignored. My trust has been rather severely breached, personally. I am not a "super-user", not a developer, not a software programmer; but I am at a more-than-average level of managing my computer settings, compared to the usual office worker or similar end-user. What happens to people who DON'T know more than average amounts about computer settings? They're the real victims -- all those end-users who are NOT on these forums raising complaints like Holy Heck. They trusted CCleaner to be the thing that solved problems exactly like the very problem which CCleaner 5.45 has introduced. So the worm turns. To explain further: the situation, it seems to me, is more likely to impact a person based on how much or little investment he or she has given to managing his own computer situation. That's sad, because that sort of investment (time, effort, knowledge accumulation) was (at least in my mind) exactly the sort of thing that the existence of CCleaner had previously minimized. With the (good version of the) program installed, you could let IT take care of a lot of your thinking about privacy, security, cleaning past traces, all that stuff. That was the point. You didn't NEED TO know a lot about settings; you just let CCleaner know about which settings to monitor. And that's why this breach is so much more nefarious. A program that is designed to give you help on a certain subject, which then instead exploits your well-being on the basis of exactly that same subject? It's like the Salvation Army showing up at first to feed the homeless (a noble endeavor!) but then changing their policy and instead giving help to the police to arrest all those homeless people for vagrancy because they don't have homes, but without telling the homeless who are lining up for what they think is another free meal, and yet continuing to canvas the streets for anyone else who might need a free meal. They get to the Salvation Army center, they want dinner, but Surprise! dinner is at jail! More simply: who better to know how to exploit people who have a particular issue, than the very organization which had previously been in the business of alleviating that that issue? I hope the metaphor is not rude to the Salvation Army ... Well, I'm going to try out an earlier version -- does anyone have a good record of which CCleaner releases are utterly without Avast's influence over Piriform? When was the purchase, the transfer of power? When did it all go ... ahem ... pear-shaped? EDIT -- after quick Googling I have found this information: 1. Avast press release states they purchased Piriform on July 19, 2017. More here https://press.avast.com/avast-acquires-piriform-maker-of-ccleaner 2. Piriform logs version changes of CCleaner here https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/version-history 3. Several websites offer legacy versions of CCleaner. I'm sure you can operate Google as well as I can to find old versions. FileHippo has them here https://filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/history . 4. Piriform/Avast keeps only certain past versions for download, here https://ccleaner.en.uptodown.com/windows/old The final link's contents, coupled with knowledge from the second link, imply that Piriform/Avast does not archive versions of CCleaner from before the merger. This fact may be further cause for suspicion or may be a simple artifact of database management and company conglomeration.
  4. Thanks to all, for your discussion of the problems with 5.45 and other thoughts on this matter. I complained in another thread, but my technical know-how is more limited than that of several participants in this thread. I am still a bit confused about the "phone home" firewall issue. With this sort of behavior, what exactly is the program TRYING to do (supposedly) and what can it nefariously GET AWAY with doing (even if the devs say they aren't)? Here's my original thread, wrong-nesses included ...
  5. Sorry to necro-reply but ... I've got no idea. I did try to find the cache and include it in a custom clean-up, but could never ID where Launchy keeps its stuff. Sorry. As you were. 2014 was a good year ...
  6. I am thankful that Piriform has responded and seems to both (a) understand and (b) intend to remedy. However, I must admit I am very cynical about the nature of this mistake. What kind of "privacy" company releases that sort of update? The new version secretly monitors a user's behavior, initiates that monitoring, re-initiates that monitoring when monitoring is turned off, deliberately counters all user input to the contrary, has no turn-off button, and displays no evidence of the monitoring in any intuitive fashion. I find it hard to believe that this is a typical oversight, the type which, in the usual course of regular updates, simply slipped through the cracks. I hope that this will be rapidly fixed and will be the end of such snooping and (worse) such non-transparent settings interfaces. This is my own initial thread on the matter ... Several other users have commented negatively, in that thread and in other similar threads. These suggestions are important. They should be implemented promptly, in my opinion. (PS -- moderators, you may feel free to delete the other posts by me from this thread, I can't figure out how to get rid of them.)
  7. Thanks to all who responded, glad to know I'm not the crazy one. It may be worth noting that my initial post now turns out to be inaccurate. Whereas I complained in that post that there were TOO MANY steps in CCleaner's settings and dialogs to disable CCleaner's Active Monitoring (I described three steps plus re-start), in fact there are NO steps which would do that. One CANNOT disable Active Monitoring via ANY settings in CCleaner, because (as others in this thread attest, above) CCleaner will re-enable Active Monitoring despite any steps to the contrary. One must depart from CCleaner and then either edit the register, or write a script, or do something else external to it, in order to circumvent Active Monitoring's re-establishment. I have uninstalled CCleaner. Give Piriform their due, for, in response to these concerns, they have posted a link, which I followed and cut-pasted a bit ... This in not the entirety of their statement. A lot of their statement implies the "why" rather than the "how" -- we make more investigations into the nature of user behavior, the internet is forever growing and changing, we keep records of your behavior only in benign manners in order to understand user needs for future updates, active monitoring reduces interaction and interface time, whatever, etc. etc.. You can find the link to it higher up in this thread and I recommend all should read Piriform's words from Piriform themselves rather than cut-pasted by me. Well, I'm cynical now. I previously thought of CCleaner as one of the more up-front and decent pieces of software out there, and I hope I can go back to thinking of it that way after this particular kerfuffle. Looking forward to the announced changes being implemented. Until then, I feel very very burned, and will remain skeptical.
  8. One aspect of the latest release (2017-07-25) is VERY annoying to me. The Active Monitoring feature is EXTREMELY difficult to turn OFF. This is a feature that looks at EVERYTHING YOU DO and keeps records of it. Yes, the use of those records is supposedly benign -- CCleaner will just help me delete those traces, right? But what if I tell you to stop monitoring me? And yet you don't? Am I going to TRUST that your monitoring is benign? No no no. I'm going to pull the PANIC BUTTON. You must must must STOP MONITORING ME!! GIVE ME MY PRIVACY BACK! Active Monitoring is defaulted to ON when you download this release (despite previous versions having it turned OFF at the time the new release is installed). That's already unreasonable. Then, in order to PREVENT future Active Monitoring, you have to take THREE steps, yes 3, three, THREE! First, (a) deselect the option in the Advanced Options dialog of CCleaner, then (b) disable the Active Monitoring start-up item, BUT NOT DELETE IT (if you delete it, the next run of CCleaner will re-install it, DEFAULTED TO THE ON POSITION AGAIN!), (this deselection also can be done with CCleaner or with any of a number of other start-up-management utilities) and then (the shocker!) you still aren't yet done. That's because you CAN'T QUIT CCLEANER! It's already in Actively Monitoring mode (despite the fact that you didn't want it to do this, it nevertheless has started monitoring on its own) so it will NOT GO AWAY! You have to (c) use Task Manager or some other third-party utility to turn off CCleaner (which otherwise will continue to run and will continue to Actively Monitor despite steps (a) and (b) above, AND FURTHERMORE will re-set your start-up setting from off to on). Then (d) restart your computer. Wow, that's TOO MUCH to make an invasion of privacy go away. Try this: one click. Period. This is too difficult, and almost to the point of misleading. The present arrangement manages to "force" CCleaner to run in the background even when you go WAY out of your way to prevent it from doing so. I hope this was a mistake. (If instead it's a deliberate feature, designed to cause CCleaner to exist in the hidden-but-running state, unbeknownst to most typical users, secretly collecting their private information, then this would be the first time in my experience with Piriform that your company has acted so much like Microsoft that I would want to get rid of you if I could. That's not in typical Piriform character.) You've managed to set up your program so that the instant a user first uses it, the user is suddenly, unwittingly, and involuntarily permanently saddled with a pervasive and permanent, and yet potentially unwanted, monitor of 100% of that user's activity forever, a monitor that is essentially secret. This is the case unless the user is more than averagely informed about technical settings and about background processes. To rephrase: YOU'RE SPYING ON ME WITHOUT MY CONSENT EVEN AFTER I DEMAND THAT YOU DON'T DO IT. That's way way WAY uncool. Suggestion: provide a QUIT button that actually ENDS CCleaner's activity; and provide an INSTANTANEOUS and EFFECTIVE way to disable the Active Monitoring, with ONE CLICK that will (1) end any presently ongoing monitoring AND ALSO will (2) disable any future monitoring from re-starting without user input. The present set-up is a subterfuge that implements invasions of my privacy directly against what I thought were my express wishes (by selecting certain more private settings) otherwise, because when I select those certain more private settings, they are not implemented transparently, but instead are controverted by other contradictory and misleading settings.
  9. The program Launchy has a text-cache that includes a large number of strings of text typed into the Launchy field. I suggest it needs to be cleaned by CCleaner. Launchy is open-source so the implementation is likely to be rather straightforward. http://www.launchy.net/
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.