alt Hacker NewsI love this app, but it's also a significant doxxing risk especially for the large number of non-technical users that it has. A quick look at the map reveals the home addresses and names of many iNaturalist users in my neighborhood, lots of them older folks that probably don't realize that adding all of the neat wildlife that they see in their backyard (or uploading things they see on remote hikes without any 3G coverage once their phone connects to their home wifi network) is also putting their home address on display by adding a cluster of photos right next to their house that are all attached to their account.
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hey, iNat eng here, just want to chime in that this is all great feedback!
here's [1] some extra info on iNat's current geoprivacy treatment and [2] guidance on how to configure this for our different platforms for individual `Observations` (our core domain entity to which geo is attached).
I'll at least share that this is on our radar to look at, but I wouldn't expect changes in the next few months. For now, we still want your observations, but if this is a concern you have, please take a look at the geoprivacy settings!
[1]: iNat's geoprivacy explainer https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/1... [2]: platform-specific guidance on configuring geoprivacy for an Observation https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/1...
iNat eng here, non-authoritative rep
handling this concern is on our radar but I can't speak to delivery timeline. It my involve timed "obscured" windows (obscure things for this hiking weekend) and/or user-configurable geofences (obscure observations around my home but not anywhere else).
we _also_ want to respect the geoprivacy of wildlife: sometimes observations generate _problematic_ attention. For sensitive species, we want people to report them, but we don't want to be complicit in or responsible for interested people flocking to the observation and potentially spooking the observed species.
Hah. I grew up when everyone had their names in the phone book with phone number and home address. It matters more to some people than others.
Does this matter if my account is some random username about birds?
Like all people learn is "someone does in fact live at that address and they use this app"
I have my house covered in observations and it would not take a rocket scientist to figure out where I live. I'm also a big believer in accurately tagging observations with locations of things in case someone else wants to try to find it. If someone wants to come to my house and take pictures of spring tails they're welcome to lol
I feel like this ship has already sailed. The home addresses of most people, especially if they have lived in the same place for awhile, is already online. In my case, even my salary info is online because I am a public employee.
I mean I do agree, and on iNat I can clearly see my house and the house of a few other people in the neighborhood. However you can easily find the current owner information for a given house in the state I live in, and since we bought the house, our name.
I guess it is different once you look at people renting, and also you could track a specific person posts to see when they are posting away from home for example. But as far as revealing your home address, sadly there are many other ways in a lot of cases
Yeah.. there should be a prompt that gauges how savvy the user is, and if the user doesn't understand the implications of this, the default should be low precision location data with a random offset per item + random offset per user.
There's an option to obscure the exact location of plants, but it's not obvious.
Wait until you see what happens when you type your address into google earth.
I can hide my home-based observation locations, but others usually do not. People who post observations in my front yard cause other iNat users to visit. This hasn't been a problem in that there have been only a few additional visitors, and they are friendly. Still, I don't like my yard being publicized.
People who walk by the yard might tell their friends, but ordinary word-of-mouth can't be queried online. Not yet.
EDIT: We did have what turned out to be a significant invasive species observation. It was published in my SO's account with the location obscured. I looked up the species online and realized it might be a concern, so I killed it and put it in the freezer. In the meantime, the California Agricultural Inspectors got wind of it and contacted iNat to obtain the email address associated with the account. After making contact, they sent someone to pick up my specimen, and the later, 4 inspectors (yes, really, 3 inspectors and a supervisor) were sent to look for additional specimens. None were found.
Unrelated to this incident, I posted endangered species (not on our property) in my account, and iNat automatically obscures the location. Later on, I got an ~~email~~ message via iNat from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife asking for access to the precise locations, which I gladly provided.