Samsung S7 / Seek app version 2.2.2 (46). I selected a plant photo from a previous day’s outing in my phone’s gallery and added it to Seek. I then chose to upload it to iNaturalist to try out that feature. A little while later, I checked iNat and noticed that it had taken my current location from when I added the observation. Turns out the photo I used had no GPS coordinates attached in the metadata. This publicly revealed the location of my home. Oops!
I went to take a screenshot of the image metadata to show how no location was attached, but the photo I used no longer appears in my photo’s “Camera album”. I checked an image I took at the same time/place, and the photo details say “no location”.
Anyway, looks like any photo that lacks a geolocation that I upload to iNat via Seek will automatically grab my current location at the time of upload, which is a major data quality and privacy issue.
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I would wish that iNaturlist would work like that! Would save tons of hours correcting. Now you only have to correct it when it is wrong, otherwise ou should correct it always.
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Yes, if a correct geotagged photo is not taken seriously I would definity have it to grab my current location, it will save hunderds of hours of work. Why does the android app not have this functionality?
I wasn’t standing next to the plant I uploaded, I was several miles away. Sorry if that was unclear. I edited the first post in the topic.
If you take the photo/make the observation within the iNat app–Android or iOS–it will already automatically record your location. If you’re not experiencing that, please file a separate bug report.
It is easier to correct it if it is a few mile away than, which is often my case, on the wrong continent in Inaturlist at least, i do not use Seek.
But i would say is is excellent behaviour. I prefer a few miles wrong or the actual GPS location.
I really would love if iNaturalist would take the actual GPS location…
Very often i do not know where i was so the GPS will be always more accuarate than my manual adaption
Huh? Just replace my particular example with the original photo being from a different continent.
Seek shouldn’t record my current GPS location if the photo is imported from the phone gallery. It should clearly ask what the original location was or leave the location field blank when exporting to iNaturalist.
I fully understand…It is a feature request for iNaturalist for the iphone to change it to the same way as Seek works. It is an excellent method. In those cases it fails you only have to can it in those situations that it is necessary. And if you have no idea where ou are GPS is always better. If there is no GPS location i always want the actual location from the GPS
The other option is that you always have to change it.
Awesome - thanks for updating this @albullington! I see it now says “undefined location” rather than using my current location without asking.
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