Don‘t know how I feel about this - iNaturalist Bio in Google‘s AI overview

[upupa-epops]

@eyekosaeder

All that being said, iNat may contain very sensitive location information. Currently, with a bit of work, you should be able to deduce my full name, what I’m doing, and with reasonable certainty my address from what I or others have posted just from my username. Maybe even a photo (although I’d be surprised). (I’m well aware of this and have actively decided against obscuring my data at this point, since that would currently be more trouble than the alternative). So I’m not sure it is that great, in general, for all of that info being accessible this easily.
For what it’s worth, in terms of privacy, I still think it should only be possible to see people’s profiles and personal observation pages when logged into an iNat account, which would automatically prevent this too. And yes, I am aware that this is not a huge barrier for stalkers or whoever wants the information for whatever purpose, but I think it would still be better for the barrier to exists.

I agree that logging in should be necessary for viewing more parts of iNat. Maybe it’s time for a feature request…

At the very least it would probably be beneficial to make users more aware that any information posted on iNaturalist (or the iNat forum) is fully public to the internet without requiring a login, since many people have gotten used to most similar platforms (both social media and citizen science) requiring a login to view posts.