Is it safe to send out System Profiler?

[hajime]

Hello. I have some problems with a 3rd party device. The support department from that company told me that the Mac version of their product works quite well in their system. They think that there might be interference from other products. In order to check, they asked me to send them my System Profiler. Is it safe to do it? Does it contain some private personal information besides the name of the machine and the user name? As far as I know, it lists the IP address. Don't know if hackers could use such info for their advantage. From the profiler, it seems that I can generate reports of three different levels. Thanks.

 

[Makosuke]

Surprised nobody else answered this.

Generally speaking, the System Profiler file contains a fair amount of information about what hardware you use, what wireless networks are available in the area, what names you give things, and what your internal network configuration is. In most cases this could not be used to directly hack into anything--it contains no passwords, and if you use a router of some kind (rather than connecting directly to a modem) it also doesn't include your external IP address (the private internal IP address is useless to pretty much anyone outside your home network, and if they're on your home network them knowing your computer's IP address is the least of your problems).

Which is to say that while it's a fair amount of private information, it's not all that much of a security risk unless somebody is very expressly targeting you.

Given that it's the support desk of a company, unless you have a good reason to think they're trying to do something bad to you (and if so, why are you using their product?), it's almost certainly fine. I, at least, would have no qualms about supplying that information to a company I trusted enough to pay for a product.

 

[hajime]

Thanks Makosuke.