I’ve been reviewing CNC observations (no particular locality) and a trend that has become apparent this year, now that finally casual observations are excluded, is observations with a falsified date, changed from what the EXIF on the images says to fit within the CNC time frame. I’ve come across bo…

Thanks for confirming, that this “ideas” were used. I had the same impression from the daily new uploads made after CNC field work had closed. I can’t help with a tool, but I do have a second wish, which could perhaps be added. O:) Perhaps it is possible to integrate a function, to search for iden…

[image] mftasp: It would be great to have a tool to search for images in, say, a CNC project, to find ones where the EXIF data on the main image and the observation date differ by more than a certain period, for example 24h i don’t think this is possible, but it might be possible to show the …

Just noting that I have also seen this behavior (posting photos with false dates to meet the inclusion criteria for CNC) this year, and I can’t remember it from years past (at least not multiples). I will also note that, as far as moderation goes, while it’s not explicitly listed/itemized under the…

I find that sometimes users will upload photos of the same species (or what they believe to be the same species) from multiple dates or times in one observation, either because they misunderstand what observations are supposed to represent or because the photos were in the same folder and they confl…

But users may just forget to adjust the date and time of their camera.

Time, if it is off by a few hours, is a common mistake/issue with time zones. Random numbers of days off seems very unlikely, and vanishingly so when the image comes from a smartphone which should have a correct date pretty much all the time.

Having different dates is often legitimate for collected specimens. The date of observation is not necessarily the date on which the photographs were taken. I sometimes photograph collected specimens days or even years after they were collected, for example, https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/…

[image] zygy: cameras very commonly have incorrect dates set which must be manually corrected when uploading to iNaturalist. Shouldn’t we be trusting that our users are acting in good faith I’m willing to give a non-app user a lot more benefit of doubt on this than an app user since it takes …

[image] upupa-epops: I’m willing to give a non-app user a lot more benefit of doubt on this than an app user since it takes significantly more effort and knowledge to take a photo with a camera (even a point-and-shoot) and upload it in the browser than it does to take photos with your phone (whi…

Yes, there can be a variety of reasons why times might differ and it’s not deliberate data falsification. The particular cases I am dealing with are clear. Some observations have the correct date and time, others, photographed with the same device, do not.

We could use a tool to highlight different dates between observations and image EXIF data

Curators

pisum May 7, 2026, 10:24am 3

i don’t think this is possible, but it might be possible to show the EXIF date and some sort of indicator when it differs a lot on the observation photo, in a way that is similar to this:

Topic		Replies	Views
iNaturalist is getting the date of the photos wrong from the exif data General	5	647	August 3, 2021
Date submitted before date observed Bug Reports web	28	4458	February 9, 2020
Select a date range when creating observations Feature Requests very-challenging	18	1619	December 1, 2023
@lnlcflx's Firefox/Chrome browser extension Third-party Tools and Apps using iNat API third-party-tools	19	607	May 12, 2026
When Observations are Photos of Photos General question	24	3672	August 24, 2019

We could use a tool to highlight different dates between observations and image EXIF data

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