Part of exported data contains advertisements

Bug Reports
1

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Website

Browser, if a website issue: Vivaldi - Chromium

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/attachments/flow_task_outputs/3239455/observations-225458.csv.zip?1650002002

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/ ):

screen
screen1920×679 156 KB

Description of problem

I tried to download data through export tool and part of downloaded table contains weird advertisements:

Buy Valid NEBOSH IELTS Certificate For Sale-Buy IELTS Certificate without exam
Buy Genuine IELTS Certificate Without Exam |Buy IELTS certificate online | Buy ielts certificate without exam |

And also others. Simply some rows in exported table contain Whatsapp numbers and other weird text. It does not look very safe. Has somebody experienced similar issue? Is export tool hacked?

Thanks for answers!

2 Likes
3

I’m not sure if anything has been hacked, but… E.g.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/59532781

Is marked as spam and I’d have thought it (and others like it) would (should) not be included in the export

4 Likes
4

The data export tool hasn’t been hacked, but that text is in the description field in an observation marked as spam above by @0x4372616967

It’s a good point about spam. This observation was downgraded to casual but casual observations can still be accessed via the data export tool on iNat. Since spam observations are inherently fraudulent, there’s a case to be made for excluding them from any kind of export, I think.

11 Likes
5

Thanks for clarification.

6

Made an issue here: https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/3430