What is ccleaner for what is it good or bad for? It is safe? Alternatives

Ccleaner is one of the most popular cleaning programs out there, and as the name implies, it basically serves to remove unnecessary files and free up storage space. The program is available for Windows and as an Android app. Probably in both cases it is currently unnecessary.

What is CCleaner and what is it for?

To begin with, CCleaner is a software developed by Piriform, the same developer behind the popular Recuva software to recover deleted files, and which was unfortunately bought by Avast in July 2017. The idea of ​​the program is to clean the garbage from the computer where it is installed, such as browsing history, cache, program residues, empty folders, thumbnails, etc.

Another key function of CCleaner is to optimize the performance of the computer in case of being slow. Basically, see what programs are working in the background or in RAM and delete them from there, working as a RAM liberator or Task Killer. While this is necessary in Windows, Android already manages RAM automatically and doing this is counterproductive. In addition, Android already incorporates a button to close the applications, which has the same effect.

Is good or bad

In its beginnings, CCleaner was a highly recommended program and app, especially in Windows, where it really did a good job cleaning the garbage, the registry and my favorite part, eliminating residues of badly installed or uninstalled programs. In fact, it was the first cleaning program I installed on my PC and I recommended it several times to Android users as the first cleaning option, despite being only a fraction as powerful as it was on PC. It still complies well in some of these sections, but currently it is no longer to my liking because of what is explained below.

CCleaner stopped being one of my favorite programs when I found out that Avast bought developer Piriform and his creations, including CCleaner. After this acquisition, undesirable behaviors were noticed in the software, such as, for example, that it was automatically updated without the user’s permission, that is, ignoring the established configuration of not updating. CCleaner was also known to collect anonymous user information through its “Active Monitoring” feature. Again in this case, even if the option was disabled, the program would force it back on after restarting or reopening it, something quite suspicious according to MakeUseOf. Finally, when closing the program, it was still active in the Windows task bar, where even when right-clicking there was no option to “Exit”. It was necessary to do Ctrl + Alt + Del to open the Windows task manager and force it to close.

On Android, CCleaner also does what it says, although its free version currently offers minimal benefit and is even counterproductive to use it as I explained above. Besides, current cell phones and tablets already bring their own cleaning and system optimization tools. And if that does not meet your expectations, there are better alternatives to CCleaner like SDMaid.

Is ccleaner safe?

Despite being a security firm, Avast made a fool of itself when it emerged that CCleaner was hacked and was a source of malware distribution. The problem has already been fixed, but it is not the only bad thing that has happened since its purchase by Avast, as I explained before.

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