Microsoft blocks official CCleaner domain on its Answers site
A report on the Italian site HTNovo suggests that Microsoft added 11 domains to a blacklist on the company's official Answers support site.
While it is not uncommon for forums to block certain sites, e.g. sites that are malicious in nature or problematic in other ways, it is a rare occurrence that legitimate sites get blocked on official forums.
Update: Avast provided the following statement via email.
"Microsoft has confirmed to CCleaner that it was erroneously placed on a blacklist and they are taking immediate steps to correct this now that they are aware of the issue."
End
The reporting site reveals that www.ccleaner.com is one of the domains but does not reveal the remaining ten domains that Microsoft blacklisted as well. According to HTNovo, the remaining ten sites fall in the download or information category.
A quick test on the Microsoft Answers forum confirms that the domain ccleaner.com is changed automatically to **** when a post is published or edited. It does not matter if a protocol or www is used or not, the domain is always changed when the post is submitted or edited.
Affiliated users, moderators and site administrators, may still post the domain name in question though. Users could bypass the blocking by using link redirection services.
Why CCleaner? HTNovo's blog post does not tell, only that Microsoft informed moderators on the forum about the blacklist filter.
One possible explanation, and HTNovo seems to hint at that possibility, is that CCleaner may be used for good and bad. In other words, the software may cause issues on Windows systems and that may lead to additional support requests on the official forum.
Even the cleaning of temporary data may cause issues on the user's end as it may remove data such as cookies that users may prefer to keep to avoid having to sign in to sites and services on the next visit.
Piriform, maker of CCleaner, was acquired by Avast in 2017. It became known shortly thereafter that the software's distribution system had been compromised. The software is still bundled with software, e.g. Avast Free Antivirus in 2017 and nowadays CCleaner Browser, which caused issues of their own for users.
It seems improbable that the bundling or any of the privacy issues caused Microsoft to blacklist the domain on its Answers forum.
The CCleaner application is not blocked by Microsoft Defender or SmartScreen at the time of writing.
Now You: What is your take on the banning of the domain? (via Deskmodder)
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.