Stan Brown

https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/cclean...matic-updates/
That links to "Here's What You Should Use Instead of CCleaner" at
https://www.howtogeek.com/361112/her...d-of-ccleaner/

I'm late to the party, so I read this first:
https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/ccleaner-is-silently-updating-users-who-turned-off-automatic-updates/
Which said:
- Even if users opt out of automatic updates, they're happening anyway
- Piriform is "gathering anonymized information about the user"
- The way to tell is to check the version number
- I just checked mine, which is not portable, which is "v5.39.6399"
- The article says it happens at and after version 5.46
- Privacy settings revert to the default, which sends usage data

The original forum thread discusses earlier versions having the problem,
but the summary article fixes the problem at 5.46 and above.