The Avast-owned software has been very popular for its simplicity and usability. But the software collected anonymized data from users in order to "gain greater insight" into how its users interact with the software," according to the company.

The data collection methods, called Active Monitoring and heartbeat, were incredibly difficult to opt out of. The team at CCleaner has promised to give users more control over whether or not their data is collected and submitted, as well as implement these changes soon.

In a forum post, Paul Piriform blames the uproar primarily on Active Monitoring's "scary name," which is a data collection feature that's been a part of CCleaner for some time. It was used to alert users when to clear out junk data. With this latest update, the CCleaner team amended its functions to send the data back to a central hub.

It is a common secret that most "free" applications are gathering users' data. It ironic to see users who have been using those apps for years waking up one day and decide to start complaining about such data collecting policies.