Snow Leopard Bug Can Wipe Out Home Directory After Guest Account Login

Erica Ogg:

For the past month, some Mac OS X users have been reporting their personal data missing after logging into their guest accounts, and Apple now says it’s working on finding a fix.

“We are aware of the issue, which occurs only in extremely rare cases, and we are working on a fix,” an Apple representative said in a prepared statement Monday.

What happens, according to numerous reports, is that after logging in and out of a Guest account (which, upon logout, wipes out any data stored within the Guest account’s home folder), and then logging in to a regular account, people are finding that their regular account has been wiped too.

Seems to be at least somewhat rare, and definitely doesn’t occur in all cases. I’ve tried it here and can’t reproduce it. Needless to say, though, I’d disable Guest account access until Apple releases a fix.

★ Tuesday, 13 October 2009