CCleaner
| CCleaner | |
|---|---|
| |
| About | |
| Classification | Utility |
| Type | System cleaner |
| Developer(s) | Piriform |
| First Release | September 23, 2003, 20 years ago |
| Development status | Active |
| Languages | English, Spanish, German, French, Arabic, Argentinean, Catalan, Chinese Simp, Chinese Trad, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Euskera, Finnish, Gallego, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (BR), Russian, Swedish & Turkish[1] |
| License | Freemium |
| Website | Piriform.com/ccleaner
|
| Requirements | |
| OS | Windows, Mac OS X, or Android[2] |
CCleaner is a piece of software intended to clean and optimize computer systems. It attempts to clean unneeded files and registry keys, and delete private information which could be stolen and exploited. It also allows for white-listing certain cookies and other traces, so that those specific ones will never be removed.[3] With over two billion downloads, CCleaner has become very popular.[4]
Advantages
- Frees up drive space
- Deletes unneeded private data (protecting it from spyware)
- Improves system performance
- Does not charge a fee for common functions
- If purchased, also offers thinks like:
- Scheduled maintenance
- Realtime monitoring
- Integrated file recovery (also available for free using the separate tool, Recuva)
- Integrated (and schedulable) drive defragmenter
Disadvantages
Privacy
Malicious software sometimes will search a victim's computer, looking for private information. By deleting much of the unneeded private information on a user's computer, CCleaner helps protect the user's privacy from attackers and spyware.
However, CCleaner itself collects some information which users may not ordinarily be comfortable with sharing. They reserve the right in their privacy policy to collect the following:[5]
- Device type
- Operating system type
- Device settings
- Application IDs
- Unique device IDs
- Other (non-Piriform)software used
- What features of Piriform's software are used
- Software crash data
- Other data collected by Google Analytics
This data collection is justified in their privacy policy as something other software companies do as well.[5]
Other
- When installed, CCleaner often tries to push sponsored software onto the computer system as well. This is often bloatware, with little use.
- There are few options to customize and configure the software. It must be used very much as it is out-of-the-box.
