CCleaner c5.49.6856 producing flyout ads for 'Black Friday'

mta3006 said:

What else is CCleaner doing when I run it?

CarlSD said:

...I had this happen to me when I ran CCleaner 5.49 yesterday...
...what sort of 'sneaky' connection is going on in the background to allow these ads to appear?

Apparently it goes back further than 5.49. I got the flyout with 5.44.



The ad is for CCleaner itself, so presumably the first 'sneaky' connection was a request sent to 'CC head office' to find out what (if any) offers are available.

Anyone clicked SHOP THE SALE yet? Doing so opens https://www.ccleaner.com/black-friday in your default browser (well it would, wouldn't it).

What follows that in the url is perhaps the 'sneaky' bit...

?utm_source=ccleaner&utm_medium=application&utm_campaign=/ccleaner/en-ww/toaster-campaigns_black-friday_black-friday

...seems innocuous enough, but tagged on at the end is a report of the version of CCleaner you are running: &v=5.44.6575

I un-checked the following and the toasts no longer appeared...

I also got the flyouts on my 1803 machine running CCleaner v5.47. No Privacy option on that version.

Edwin, do you have the free or paid version of CCleaner?

I have the free version and the only option I have under Options > Privacy is the first one in your screenshot (Help improve CCleaner by sending anonymous usage data).

The other two are not there.

CarlSD said:

Edwin, do you have the free or paid version of CCleaner?

I have the free version and the only option I have under Options > Privacy is the first one in your screenshot (Help improve CCleaner by sending anonymous usage data).

The other two are not there.

Oops! Yeah sorry, that was the Pro Trial!

Here's the free version...



I think I found the culprit though...

Go to Cookies, right click on creativeserving.com and choose Delete now - no more banner!

Tried deleting all cookies in CCleaner as well as Avast & CCleaner "Cookies to Keep" and I still get the Black Friday ad (when I'm connected to the Internet).

Also tried blocking it with Windows Firewall (both CCleaner and CCleaner64 in Program Files) but that doesn't work either.

Oh, well... not really worth worrying about. Takes me 5 seconds to temporarily disconnect from the Internet before running CCleaner which Is what I will do from now on.

Next time I do a clean install of Windows I won't be installing this program again.

The CCleaner ads use the cookie "ipm-provider.ff.avast.com". Avast/Piriform have it whitelisted and CCleaner will not delete it. It is usually seen under options>cookies. You can delete it there, but it will automatically return. I dumped CCleaner and have been using the built-in Windows tools. A friend of mine is very much impressed with HD Cleaner but I don't know anything about it at this point.

Bree said:

Saw this the other day a few times. Uninstalled and install 'slim' version from here - https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/builds
Have this bookmarked but must have dl'd Full when notified of version update, last time. Don't know if this fixed but haven't seen ad since (couple days now).

As Bree mentioned "Apparently it goes back further than 5.49. I got the flyout with 5.44."
I'm running 544 and get the fly out.