Confirmed observations vanished from my profile

Here the second theme:
Yesterday, after the described logout-login in the i-phone-app, I discovered that about 8 observations had vanished from my profile. Seven of them were the first I uploaded (The very first one - Mauer-Zimbelkraut

iN_Zimbelkraut_Mauer-_Cymbalaria-muralis_Wegerichgewächs_2019-05-15_Köln-Bayenwerft.jpg2448×3264 3.28 MB

  • on 15.05.2019. I’m pretty sure about the date, because I was in Cologne this day, but in my profile the date of my iNat-registration is 19.05.2019 - another confusing thing.).
    All of the vanished observations had been confirmed.
    How can I get them back?
    Gladly I filed most of the observations additionally on my computer, maybe it is helpful to list them here:
    2019-05-25_Acker-Ochsenzunge_Anchusa-arvensis
    2019-05-25_europäischer_Siebenstern_Lysimachia-europaea
    2019-05-25_Gewöhnliche_Vogelmiere_Stellaria-media
    2019-05-25_Wald-Wachtelweizen_Melampyrum-sylvaticum
    2019-05-26_Kreuzblättrige_Wolfsmilch_Euphorbia-lathyris
    2019-06-05_knotige-Braunwurz
    This experience is a bit vexing, because I wished to use my iNat-account as a personal archive for future observations and vanishing observations is not inspiring confidence.
    Thank you very much for helping me with these questions
    florawestfal
1 Like

I see 8 observations deleted via the iPhone app on July 6th around 9:45am Eastern. Since there are just a few observations, and it sounds like you have the data still on your computer, the recommended action would be to just re-create the observations.

While iNaturalist is a good place to archive observations, I just want to point out we are not to be used as a photo backup (see https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/what+is+it), so I recommend you keep copies of all your photos.

Did you not intentionally delete these observations from within the app? Would anyone else have access to your account via the iPhone app? Or can you think what else may have happened yesterday at 9:45am EDT?

2 Likes

Thank you the information! I can understand your recommendation now und will keep up my backup-procedure.
I still have no idea how the observations where deleted, not intentionally that’s for sure.
Knowing now the time of the deleting I can say, it happened at the same time, when I logged out and logged in again in the iPhone app. I did this several times before to get the german plant names back. (I wrote a separate report for this question yesterday.) Since all the observations had been synchronized with the website this caused no problems until July 6th.