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Automatic bug reporting is such a great idea to help improve software, but why add in unnecessary spying? Well, it seems to work for Real and several other companies I can think of, mostly because people just don't know it's going on.
Actually, I think Microsoft should be applauded for trying to make IE bulletproof.
However, sending info about what software you have installed on your machine could be useful for identifying software conflicts. If all vendors went to greater lengths to prevent/fix software conflicts with other vendors' products, I would be a much happier geek.
As long as the software information is restricted to the App name and version number, it's a good thing. If they're somehow mining your registration information, that definitely falls under "personal info they don't need to know."
For example. For the last hour Dave tried to tell me there was a problem with a program of mine. I'd try it and it would work great - Dave would and he'd get an error. We went back and forth for about 10 emails and I finally discovered it. I only figured it out by tracing his IP all the way through the loop and logging the output. Turned out, it wasn't a program error, it was an HTML error in my form syntax. It only effected Netscape. 1 little scrap of info I forgot to ask about could have saved an hours work.
Having worked with a browser manufactuer on new builds, I can't count the times I've left something little out of a bug report that was critical to finding the error.
