Personal information in sysdiagnose dumps on OS X Sometimes after I've sent bug reports to Apple, they ask for a sysdiagnose dump, which contains a bunch of files with information about my system.

While it's very useful for Apple to get this information to reproduce the problem and debug their code, I noticed that at least some semi-personal information is stored in these files.

Stuff like recently opened files, various file paths and other things that expose the system owner to some extent, and are irrelevant for the debugging purpose.

I'd like to help Apple improve their products without revealing unnecessary details about my system, at least file paths to personal files, cache data of viewed documents, etc.

But what to do?

My current best approach is to grep the file tree for file paths and replace them with wildcards, but this is cumbersome at best, and there may be a lot more to it that I don't know about.

Is Apple likely to improve their sysdiagnose to be more considerate for privacy if asked?
Let Apple Know

While no-one here can speak for Apple, you should provide feedback directly to Apple via their feedback page. The more people who offer feedback with this concern, the more likely they will be to improve and refine the reporting tools.

Delicate Balance

To fully debug a problem, it is likely some amount of personal information will be needed. If only to recreate the problems caused by unexpected paths, file, and folder names. This is a delicate balance and one where Apple needs to demonstrate to its customers that privacy is taken seriously.

As of OS X 10.11, Apple's system_profiler tool does include flags that explicitly exclude personal information.

As an anecdote, I have previously reported bugs to Apple that involved HP hardware. Apple contacted me asking for permission to pass on my Mac's diagnostic information to HP; that request acknowledged the private information embedded in the bug report. It is difficult to know if this was a single engineer's concern or something driven by an internal company policy.