If the false location is only a dozen metres from the true location, then yes, it’s completely pointless to fudge the location in this way. It would only take at most a few hours of searching in the general area around the false pin to find what you’re looking for.
I could only see merit in doing this, to protect your home address for example. But if it’s done to protect the vulnerable location, I see no point.
This is a significant flaw in how the obscuration is done because it can trip up the naive user. It’s possible to determine if the location coordinates are real or not using software. It’s just not very intuitive.
I will just note that obscuration only really hides the date/time from visually displaying on iNat pages. It’s straightforward to access the date/time for obscured observations via multiple routes. “Rounding” it to month is a convenience measure to make it harder to infer true locations, but will not prevent others from finding out this information, see
“iNaturalist avoids displaying the exact date of obscured observations publicly but this information is still available in the API responses”
This
seems like something to bring up with iRecord - why prevent verifiers from getting key information that they could use? Getting that info to experts is one of the key reasons for have the iNat portals to begin with.
Indeed. I didn’t know how much of the “workarounds” could be explicitly stated in the forum, but there are certainly ways around all of these settings. Annotations are very exploitable as well. My feeling is if you’re that concerned with preventing someone from finding the organism, just don’t post it to inat. I’ve got several insects I just won’t ever post because it’s not worth the risk.
I agree; if I find a rare species, I almost never post it. Instead, I send the information directly to the state endangered species program, if I see it in my state or a surrounding state.
I have always understood the risk to plants which because they do not move they are at risk for poaching. I have certainly read articles about birdwatchers flocking to see rare species when spotted in unusual places, which seems (at least to me), like it could be stressful to the bird itself.
But insects have never even occurred to me. Would insects not have a life cycle that could conceivably allow for their posting at some point? Or would they not move? Is the danger from insect watchers/poachers?
The danger is primarily from collectors. Many insects use the same places yearly, for example butterflies or moths that only lay eggs on a certain species of plant. If you find a patch that has caterpillars one year, collectors would know to look for them there during breeding season in future years.
I don’t like the idea of collectors preying on rare species, but apparently, there is very little evidence that rapacious collectors have much of an impact on butterfly numbers. I think the bigger threat is habitat destruction, either by development, climate change, or invasive species (including novel diseases/parasites affecting host plants).
Gardeners and golfers are probably a bigger threat to butterflies than collectors.
Oh I just meant the danger of making the location known publicly was primarily from collectors. Didn’t mean to imply they are one of the major threats overall. Pin that on chem companies! Still, if one cares about the animals, one doesn’t want to play a part in getting even a single individual killed to fill out someone’s collection drawer, much less dozens killed by a commercial collector selling them online.
In 2020, when switching from taking fotos (without GPS, guessing on the map where I had taken the foto), to using the app, i became aware how much better location data are using the app.
Using the app i still get about 2% observations with off location data. But at least the remaining 98% are spot on.
Yes agriculture expanding into primary forests and roads or other projects built in and though sensitive habitats, are the main threat to biodiversity in most of Latinamerica. Collectors are playing a role in a few well known taxa only. In order to protect the most sensitive habitats: unfudged and unobscured biodiversity data are urgently needed in most of Latinamerica and beyond.
Yes, I fully understand why it works that way (and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have the Obscure function primarily geared towards rare finds rather than observer privacy). It’s just that that’s also exactly the reason that I personally don’t use that function, because it hides more info than I need or want it to hide. If I were to find something groundbreaking and at-risk, I would be very happy about the date and time being obscured alongside the location itself, I’ve just not been in a situation yet that would justify obscuring for conservation reasons rather than privacy reasons. So fudging is my default for the latter.
I think that the time of an obscured observation should be rounded to the nearest hour, not hidden entirely. I’ve observed an owl; since I was at home, I obscured it. If there’s a similar-sounding bird that calls in the daytime, an identifier would want to know that this bird called at 23:00, but since it’s obscured, all he knows is the month.
I’m an obscurantist. I will not give precise locations if there are even remote odds that someone will want to bag an animal or pin a rare insect to their chloroform boards. My interest is in the individual surviving, never mind if it’s common and thriving. We have various locations where a certain orchid thrives; I keep them obscured. A couple years ago I found a mama moose with two calves in a popular dog-walking area. They are not uncommon, but neither are unethical hunters. Obscured. I have wondered if people can bypass my obscured location … Probably most cannot? I worked as a librarian for some time in a federal (Canada) library. One of our top scientists routinely pinned moths and butterflies and beetles to a velvet board … I would never take even those tiny fluttery lives. Other scientists hunted every year and killed “their” annual caribou or moose. I don’t do that. Science can be cold. I love all living things. If I encounter a rare insect or bird, I’m not going to say exactly where so that 100 life-listers can go there! No. I’ll try and get a discerible pic so it’s indisputable what it is, but going to be vague as to where, and might not report it for a week.
love the reasoning although it made me laugh as that circle radius of what that “several” km is is highly subjective unless they measured something statistical in field for that organism 
. anyway, its unrealistic to assume the pin position is to be taken as certainty of observation and circle radius is extraneous as you did although I can totally understand how the UI design as it exists can fool towards such wrong assumptions.
Omg I was thinking of it other day. "The mathematical capability of obscuring via “axis-aligned squares versus any other shapes rather for X set of datapoints” keeping aside the caveats with any such obscurations methods as whole. let me start a new forum thread for this later.
I think the anchor has to exist simply to index those observations onto map instead of overly complex patching to keep both obscured squares and points separately as is. Imagine how would u represent these on map without points in first place when they are NOT the main pin you are looking at, drawing all those background squares for those obscured observations is totally messy and so is altogether discounting them from getting a place on map.
you can actually select geoprivacy during exports
and even if u did single export, u can simply rely on geoprivacy data in export to separate these two sets of “obscured option” vs not obscured
it is actually the reverse, the square on site for naive user directly already indicates the obscuration is done? if u meant export data for naive users to separate these, see above pics.
I used to simply obscure but now my preferences align with fudging rather as I understood how wide the obscure is (and I may not need that 30km level cell privacy) and its serious limitations (if I record a marine species on coast, and it so happens that current obscure with its naive randomization without underlying geography taken into account finds a random square and it so happens unluckily that my true point is actually just a corner of that square overlapping on this coast and thus totally defeating the guarantees of obscure, rather than fudging to 1km with geography context I could have done easily ).
Personally, I say it is actually fudging that is guaranteed to protect for my home observations over the obscure (if one is not trusting anyone so far with coordinates as is the case with my home obs) and if one is carefully taking into account of geography during such fudge to find a good harder fudge circle, than relying on “obscure” - but ofc also doing fudging of their other spatiotemporal data equally.
for discussion fullness, here is an approximate graph of how wide the current obscuration cell is:
ok this one is interesting note:
and that bug can impact us as this example case:
Suppose for an open observation, you accidentally first used a map picker or GPS coordinate of media and you uploaded an observation, then the true place note reflects the true coordinate (its not uncommon that even your street or door number ends up in place guess text now depending on area and google maps coverage) and suddenly you realised the mistake (as its sensitive location) and now you “fudged” the circle or point or picker in the next edit of observation. But the auto-generated “place text” from initial point is preserved by inat (wrongly until that above bug is fixed)
so the fudgers should currently recheck this place text always carefully during such fudge edits until that bug fix
Perhaps a good consideration, but not a bug so I wouldn’t expect it to change.
note the point of “non-manual but autogenerated locality note”
its a well studied computer science concept where the two different data points are conflated here as equal and immutable data - but the reality is one is manual locality note (that current design assumes is the only possible case) versus other case being auto-generated locality notes. there is zero reason the text should stay static and anchored to first such auto-generate place as locality note entry in latter case (coordinate or map) edits, so it is indeed a bug.
anyway users can follow discussion in that bug report thread.
I’m guessing there are reasons it was designed this way, but you are welcome to submit a feature request for this change (this is getting off topic of the original thread).
The place names are a joke anyway. If they are auto-generated, completely disregard them. They are useless.
