Diagnostic and Usage Data Collection in Mac OS X 10.6.3
Apple just released Mac OS X 10.6.3. Pretty good. As usual, the list of bug fixes and patches is quite long. Thanks for that 
Oh, and they added a diagnostic and usage data collection … erm, feature? Hey, it is even enabled by default:
If there was a possibility for opting out I must have missed it somehow. Actually, I am pretty sure they did not ask me.
Speaking as a software engineer, I understand that crash logs and usage data can be invaluable for creating timely and to-the-point patches and updates. On the other side, this is my system. And the data stored on it is mine. Once again, speaking as a software engineer: in the way of creating new applications, a lot of crashes will occur. Bugs need to be squashed, and features to be added. Why should Apple know what I am working on? Or simply what video I was looking at before Youtube crashed? Or what mail caused Mail.app to go down in flames?
And why is it so hard to ask your customers if they want to take part in the user data collection before such a gimmick is activated?
Read more about the Diagnostic and usage data collection (and how to disable it) here.
It shouldn’t be enabled by default, you are asked to submit data to Apple.
Strange. Apparently I am not the only one who has the data collection enabled by default, Leo at fscklog observed this as well (link is in German).
Random event or screwup?