WARNING: JUNK AHEAD New tool, old scam
Junk offender: Clean PC Smart
Many PC users can be blindly enthusiastic about tools that claim to remove junk (temporary files, duplicates, caches and so on). As you and I know, these tools can be trouble. Recent offenders Slimcleaner Free (Issue 488) and Wise Registry Cleaner (Issue 482) both bundle PUPS in their installers. New program Clean PC Smart takes a different approach – it is actually a PUP itself. It won’t harm your computer, but it does appear to be a front for a tech-support scam so sneaky that it’s more Villain of the Fortnight than Junk Offender. Actually, let’s call it both.
Clean PC Smart installs and scans quickly and smoothly, but it’s entirely useless. It exists purely to lure you into phoning a US helpline where support staff can “fix issues” the program apparently found in your registry. This helpline has been the subject of warnings from Malwarebytes and Microsoft for more than two years. So Clean PC Smart is basically just a giant new advert for an old scam. Clean PC Smart first appeared in October. It was buried in the long lists of software updates and patches that I comb for material for our Best Free Software pages. Normally, I won’t know a program is dodgy until I’ve tested its installer, but Clean PC Smart rang alarm bells instantly. There was no release number and no information about the developer or licence ( open source, trial or whatever).
Chrome didn’t block Clean PC Smart’s website, but the site did load worryingly slowly. Once loaded, it hit me with flashy graphics and some laughable ‘testimonials’ from ‘Jack’ and ‘Samantha’ (“I recommend this for all of you” and “This is the best Windows junk and file cleaning and optimizing tool…). If those stock photos are genuinely of people called Jack and Samantha, I’m Bill Gates (see screenshot below left).
I ran the installer, which didn’t appear to contain any junk. As soon as the program opened, its various cleaning tools scanned my PC automatically. It scanned my PC so fast it actually made me chuckle. Legitimate tools such as Ccleaner take several minutes to scan your registry, but Clean PC Smart found ‘Total 7436 issue’ within five seconds (see screenshot above left). When I clicked Registry Cleaner to check the “issues” (now 7,590, apparently) they included Registry entries for basic Windows tasks and useful software.
This made me nervous, so I saved a system restore point before clicking ‘Fix All issue’. I needn’t have bothered with the restore point, because no files were changed or removed. Clean PC Smart was simply reading the same files over and over again, so that it looked busy when I checked Task Manager.
What’s the point?
Why is it going to all the trouble of pretending? It seems to be a ruse to make you call the ‘Toll Free’ (in other words, US and not free at all) number for help. I looked up the number on Google and found warnings from Malwarebytes ( www.snipca.com/22762) and Microsoft ( www.snipca.com/22764) linking it to a two-year-old tech-support scam.
Clean PC Smart doesn’t seem to be malware. But at best, it’s a piece of junk whose files are clogging up your hard drive and registry – precisely the opposite of what you want it to do. At worst, it could get you sucked into a support scam that costs you money and could even give fake tech workers access to your PC.