There are many privacy cleaners for Windows PC and some are very good, like Ccleaner. However, if you are looking for a great alternative tool, you should consider PrivaZer, which is great. (Updated Apr 2020)

A privacy utility is one that erases your internet tracks and general computer activities. These include your web browsing history, which is a list of all the websites you have visited over the last month or two. Browser cookies in which websites store information, programs you have run in Windows, recent files opened in various programs, program caches, system logs, Windows updates and so on

PrivaZer is a free Windows utility that does all of this and more, and it cleans more than the average privacy cleaner. Go to the Download page and there is a portable version that can be run from the Downloads folder on the computer with no installation. I prefer not to install software if I can help it.

There is a ‘Donor’ version and after donating to the author any amount you want from $10 or £10 up, you have access to a few more features. However, the basic free version is good enough for me.

Choose what to clean

PrivaZer is intelligent and it will avoid erasing anything that might be useful, unless you override its settings and tell it to. Unlike some privacy clean-up tools that just present clean-up options with little explanation, this one starts with a series of questions and these are important for setting the default clean-up actions.

You are first asked if you are a basic or advanced user and if you choose advanced, you get to configure everything and there are quite a lot of settings you can adjust, so I won’t ist them all, but here are some of them.

Windows generates thumbnails of all the image files on the disk drive and even after deleting an image, its thumbnail may still be stored by Windows. There is an option to remove them.

The file history and temporary files of Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, OpenOffice and popular photo editors can be cleaned. When images are viewed in Explorer, the thumbnails are cached and these can be erased.

Web browser auto-complete histories that pop up when you start typing a website URL, thumbnail images of websites and cookies can be deleted. There is a smart option to remove all cookies except important ones, like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, eBay and others, and this means that you will not lose your login details and preferences for your favourite websites.. Browsing history and browser caches can be cleaned.

Windows 10 is updated twice a year with a new version and backups and files from the previous version still on the disk drive. They take up a lot of disk space, maybe 30 GB or more, and they could contain private information, so there is an option to erase them. Windows Update is hardly a privacy issue, but deleting old files could certainly free up some disk space and it might even help to cure a Windows Update problem.

Privacy cleaners and Windows optimisers can clear out the Prefetch folder. This is a sort of cache used by Windows to speed up the loading of applications and it is useful. PrivaZer can erase everything, but it can also intelligently clean it by removing only those invalid items, any unused in the last six months, and software execution history. This is another clever and useful feature.

Deleted files remain on the disk drive, even when the Recycle Bin has been emptied. PrivaZer can erase any traces in the free space. It scans unused sectors and cleans them if any information is found, which is an essential task all privacy tools should have.

All data is securely deleted and there are several different methods to choose from, including the popular and over-the-top Peter Gutmann’s algorithm that is completely unnecessary these days. PrivaZer supports both traditional mechanical disk drives and solid state drives (SSD).

Privacy vs speed

One of the best features of PrivaZer is that as you go through all the clean-up features, configuring the options, you are often given the choice between privacy and speed. Clean-up features are often explained and the option for best privacy and best speed are labelled. It is your choice. Not all clean-up features affect the speed, like removing dead program shortcuts, but where it does, you can choose.

Scan and clean

After scanning the system, PrivaZer waits for you to click the Clean button and you have the opportunity to tweak the clean-up tasks. Checkboxes next to each task enable you to choose whether to clean or not. Click each item and a list of sub-items appears on the right and these can be clicked to see a detailed list of exactly what will be cleaned.

Many clean-up tasks are fairly quick, but some can be time consuming on a big and slow hard disk drive, like the free space erasing, but you can set it going and choose an option to automatically shut down the computer afterwards. This could be used as a good way to clean and power off the PC at the end of the day.

Summing up

I occasionally come across PC users who have problems with their PC, such as a program not working properly, and it turns out they have been using a clean-up tool. In theory, these apps should not remove anything useful, but in practice, they sometimes do.

PrivaZer is a great utility, but as with all power tools, you need to be careful how and when you use it. Always have a backup of the disk drive. The utility has backup options that enable the registry changes to be saved so they can be restored, and saving a Windows system restore point before cleaning anything. Use them.

Bear in mind the privacy vs speed options. Erasing all your tracks might cause the computer to run slightly more slowly. However, clearing caches, logs and other things can sometimes fix errors in Windows or programs.

I recommend PrivaZer and it is a great utility, but do be careful with it!

A good way to increase privacy and security is by using a VPN. It creates a secure internet connection that helps prevent others from seeing what you are doing and tracking online activities. I have used NordVPN and found it to be excellent – see NordVPN offers. Other recommended VPNs include Surfshark, PureVPN and Ivacy VPN. (My affiliate links)