Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Stop Apple SubmitDiagInfo Radar Submissions

If you run an outbound firewall such as Little Snitch you may come accross notifications which say,

“SubmitDiagInfo”
wants to connect to radarsubmissions.apple.com on TCP port 443
IP Address 17.254.2.214
Reverse DNS Name radarsubmission.apple.com”

From what I have been able to figure out this is a service on Mac OS X which submits diagnostic information to Apple. It typically starts to pop up after one or more applications have crashed. It if likely these reports identify which applications you have running, along with other system information.

If you do not wish to submit this information the easiest way to turn it off (on Snow Leopard) is to open the Console (spotlight for “Console” and you should find it easily).

In Console bring up the Preferences. You should see this:

Console Preferences

Remove the tick from the box indicated in the above image.

If you have privacy concerns (or just don’t like software sending data online without your permission) you can also tell Little Snitch (or the free TCPBlock) to Deny the connection, Globally.

I am told this preference option is NOT there on OS X LION. Apple has a habit of removing things that were useful. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. In this case Apple have made it easier and more logical with regards to turning this “feature” off.

If you use OS X LION (10.7+) this info will tell you plenty about diagnostic reporting and how to turn it off (or just read on for instructions): http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.7/en/mh27990.html

Basically, you have to go to the PRIVACY section of the Security & Privacy Preferences. Here’s the instructions:

Opt-out of automatic reporting (on OS X Lion)

You can change your reporting options at any time:

  1. Choose Apple >System Preferences, click Security & Privacy, and then click Privacy.Open the Privacy pane of Security & Privacy preferences  <— Click this link to open the panel now
  2. Deselect “Send diagnostic and usage data to Apple.”

Diagnostic and usage information will no longer be sent to Apple.

UPDATE: Well, making the above-mentioned change in the Lion preferences is meant to stop this information from being submitted. Oddly enough, it appears Apple is ignoring their own privacy settings in Lion. I am not sure what more to suggest except to use Little Snitch to permanently block it. Alternatively, if you don’t wish to invest in a program like Little Snitch, you can simply edit the Hosts file on your Mac as per the following instructions.

Blocking Automatic Reporting with the Hosts file

Here’s an easy way to block any application (or system process) for accessing the Internet. It’s free and simple. We’ll use what is called the Hosts file. If you are not familiar with changing the Hosts file I recommend you do it using a free application called Gas Mask. You can download Gas Mask from here: http://bit.ly/L6Y680

Install Gas Mask by dragging it to your Applications folder, as per normal. Gas Mask will likely ask you for your password the first time you run it. This is because the Hosts file it is going to modify is a system protected file. In Gas Mask you will add a line that looks like this:

127.0.0.1     radarsubmission.apple.com

Just put this line at the end of the Hosts file. Hit save. You’re done. Now when your misbehaving Mac tries to connect to Apple’s Radar Submission server, it will be referred back to your computer  which in effect makes the submission process “think” you are not online.

 

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21 Comments

  1. with lion, there is no option to untick the the anonymous sending. the preferences box just ends after the time scale. but still submitdiaginfo appears quite regularly in little snitch. any suggestions what to do?

  2. Thanks for this helpful post. I opened Console Preferences just now (Lion) and found the top two choices with slider underneath exactly as you showed — but that’s where the choices end now. The window has been truncated to exclude the check-box for user-control of automatic data transfer to Apple. Very instructive to see the two Preference panes side by side.

  3. I have disabled that in System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Privacy
    Lion 10.7.3 still called radarsubmissions 🙂 Even without any crash. There are some apps you really wanna buy, like LittleSnitch.app <3

  4. On OS X Lion, I have disable send Diagnostic and usage data to Apple, but still “SubmitDiagInfo” tries to connect which intent is cached on the spot by little snitch.

    If you own an iPhone, you may also want to disable “send diagnostic and usage data to Apple” Which is, by the way, the Synonym of the Carrier IQ Spyware “Factory Installed” on most Android devices. On the Android side, you can disable Carrier IQ. On iPhones, you have to disable “Send Diagnostic and Usage Data to Apple – which is practically the same thing as the Carrier IQ Spyware on Android Devices.

    My advice, use the iPhone Configuration utility to create a profile for your iPhone with the option to Disable “send diagnostic and usage data to Apple” That way, as far as your configuration profile is installed on your iPhone (which should be password protected) you won’t have to worry about this thing being turned on.

    On the Mac side, just tell little snitch to block the collection for ever. You really never know what other stuff could be transmitted by this thing, so better to block it.

  5. i have always had, Deselect “Send diagnostic and usage data to Apple.”, unchecked, but apple still tries to send. is this tip is moribund?

  6. I followed your instructions for lion and the send diagnostics checkbox was already unticked when little snitch detected the connection attempt. Any idea why or how to stop it?

  7. Interesting. Just installed Lion on my old SL machine and had little snitch pop up a notifier about this.

    Best part is? I already had deselected the “send diagnostic and usage information to apple” checkbox.

    So, I guess that on 10.7.4 apple is just ignoring their own privacy settings.

    thank goodness for little snitch.

  8. I’m using Mountain Lion and the checkbox in > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Diagnostics & Usage is off. However, if you click on “Advanced…” I found a choice for automatically updating the safe password list that was on. Perhaps this functionality uses the same site for the list. Then it’s a question of wanting that listing or not. I wonder if Apple should be given the benefit of the doubt that providing the listing is all that is being done when the other setting is off.

    I’ll let you know if I still get the error after turning getting the listing off.

  9. Thank you! Im running on 10.7.3 read the instructions works great and little snitch is my bitch .. make sure you click on the lock on bottom corner to login as an administrator so you can click disable otherwise it will appear unchangeable

    • Thanks Justintime. Yes, Little Snitch will do the trick. Although I can appreciate not everyone will want to fork out $$ for a program solely to prevent Apple from reporting data from their computer back to Apple.

  10. Little snitch told me submitdiaginfo was sending without my permission.
    Thanks for your efforts to make us smarter.

    Last year when google changed their privacy settings, little snitch told me google was tracking me to nearly EVERY website I visited. I cancelled my gmail account and they stopped tracking me in a few days.

  11. I followed your directions for snow leopard (by unticking the automatically send anonymous diagnostic and usage info to apple) in console’s preferences. Now I have no access to my security preferences in my system preferences. It tells me it is “Loading Security….” but it just spins it’s wheels and Security never opens. In going back to Console’s preferences to retick the check box, the option to turn it back on is now grayed out with no way to reinstate it.

    Rebooting did not help… OS 10.6.8/macbookpro

    Please help me get back access to System Security Preferences…….

    • That sounds rather odd. The first thing I would do is a Repair Permissions from Disk Utility.
      Failing that, it might be worth taking some computer into an Apple Store. Although they will likely just recommend a reinstall.
      Do you have a really recent Time Machine backup?

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