How safe is CCleaner? What you need to keep in mind

The free tool CCleaner is used to clean your computer from unneeded files. Usually, you download the software for this purpose and then install it. But before you let the program onto your system, it is important to know how safe it is.

How safe is CCleaner

With CCleaner you have the possibility to clean up your computer and thus get rid of unneeded or duplicate files. For this, you need to download and install the tool. Moreover, the program accesses your entire system, including the registry entries. For this very reason, it is important that the software is secure.

1. In2017, it became known that CCleaner was infected with malware. This mainly affected versions 5.33.6162 and 1.07.3191. Since then, however, version 5.40 has already been released, arriving with a major security update that removed the malware and closed the security hole.
2. Regardless of the danger posed by malware, it can happen that important registry entries are deleted from the PC under Windows. Dies kann dazu führen, dass Ihr Betriebssystem nicht mehr wie gewohnt funktioniert. Sie können diese Gefahr jedoch ausschließen, indem Sie die Registry nicht in der Suche einbeziehen und somit auch die Einträge ignorieren. Standardmäßig sucht die Software nämlich nicht in der Registry.