Blew $40 on a 'magic' file cleaner app and it deleted my tax docs instead

I saw this ad for CleanerMax Pro on Facebook promising to zap all my duplicate photos and old junk files. Figured $40 was worth it since my phone had 30,000 screenshots from 2018. First scan looked fine until I realized it wiped every PDF I had, including three years of tax returns I had saved in a folder. Had to spend a whole Saturday digging through Google Drive backups just to get my W2s back. Anyone else fall for a cleaning tool that did more harm than good?

3 comments

3 Comments

theas281d ago

Didn't someone on Reddit say those apps basically just run the same scan as your phone's settings?

phoenix_singh252d ago

$40 for a cleaner app sounds like a gamble. I've always just used my phone's built-in storage settings and never had anything get deleted.

miles_robinson201d ago

built-in storage settings never getting stuff deleted, huh? i mean, sure, they're safe and dumb proof, but that's exactly the problem. you're leaving all the junk files and cache and leftover crap from apps you don't even use anymore. that's like saying you clean your house just by looking at the floor. my phone was always running out of space and getting slow until i started using a dedicated cleaner app that actually finds things the phone's own settings won't touch. it's not a gamble if you know what you're doing with it.