Security and Privacy

Security & privacy

What it accesses, and why

ClutterCutter needs to see your files' sizes, so it reads directory metadata. To do that quickly it uses two privileged capabilities on NTFS drives:

• Administrator elevation — requested (optionally) at startup.
• Raw volume read of the Master File Table (\\.\C:).

Both are used only to read file metadata for the scan. ClutterCutter never reads your file contents, and you can decline elevation and run with the slower walker fallback instead.

Offline by default

ClutterCutter has no telemetry and phones nothing home. It does not connect to the network to scan, and nothing about your files ever leaves your machine. (Update checks, if any, are the only network use and are opt-in.)

Deleting is reversible

Every delete — a single row, a multi-selection, or Recycle all in the temp-files view — sends items to the Windows Recycle Bin, never a permanent delete. You can restore anything from the Recycle Bin as usual.

Open source & reproducible

The full source is public at StruisICT/ClutterCutter, and every release is reproduced by GitHub Actions from that source.

Code signing

The release binaries are currently unsigned. Because ClutterCutter requests admin and reads the raw NTFS volume, SmartScreen and some antivirus heuristics may warn on first run — choose More info → Run anyway. Authenticode signing via the SignPath Foundation open-source program (a verifiable publisher, for free) is wired into the release pipeline and planned to be enabled, which will remove the warning.