Last modified 11 years ago Last modified on 5/24/2012 10:23:15 AM

Eraser BlackBox Data Collection Policy

This document explains and outlines the policy governing the use of data collected through the BlackBox crash reporting service.

What BlackBox Is

BlackBox is an Eraser plugin written to detect situations where Eraser would crash. In those situations, it would automatically gather information about the crash, storing it on your computer, where at a later time you can upload for Eraser's developers to review.

Among the data collected are:

  • Memory dump of the crashing process. This contains the program's state at the time of the crash. Because .NET programs require a full memory dump for dump debugging to be useful, the memory dump can be upwards of 150MB.
  • A screenshot of when the dump occurred, including the position of your mouse cursor. This is for diagnostic purposes, as sometimes a memory dump may not include contextual information about what you were doing, or what the program's UI looked like (for UI-caused crashes)
  • System information, such as your processor, available amount of memory, running processes, etc.

Since the information recorded is gathered automatically, information contained in reports may contain potentially sensitive information. You are advised to go through the report before uploading it.

Determining What is Uploaded

After the reports are collected, you can double-click on a report using the Manage BlackBox Reports command in the Tools menu to open the contents of a report. You can delete any file within the folder to prevent BlackBox from uploading it. However, note that deleting files in the report may impact the usefulness of the report. You are advised not to modify the files in the report.

Data Storage

The collected information will be stored on a server which only Eraser developers have access to. The server may be moved from location to location, depending on the hosting provider currently hosting Eraser's web services.

Data Use

The collected information will be used purely to improve the quality of Eraser as a product. Personally identifiable data, if any, will be kept confidential and will not be used to identify the reporter. Reports will be erased upon the completion of bug fixing.