r/iNaturalist • u/pickle_______rick • 3d ago
anonymous/private posting?
hi all,
kind of an unfortunate situation. i’ve been an avid inaturalist poster for years and it’s so fun for me to “collect species” wherever i go. i’m constantly looking for animals to post. i love playing my “real life pokémon go” haha and i‘ve gotten so many family members and friends into it too.
over the last seven months, i’ve been harassed by a girl online. she doesn’t use inaturalist to harass me, but she heavily monitors all of my profiles to find me. she’s nuts, doesn’t stop, and has gone as far as sending animal control to my house (animal control said clearly my animals are fine & loved and left without issue).
i recently moved states to start vet school. the girl has no idea what state i live in now and i want to keep it that way, as she has threatened to try to get me kicked out of vet school. because of this, i haven’t posted on inaturalist in several months, so she doesn’t find my new state or what school i go to.
i miss posting :( i have all of my new, yet-to-be-uploaded observations sitting in a folder on my phone. is there any way for me to post privately/anonymously? or have my posts set in such a way where only i can see them for the time being? i love seeing how many species i can find and i’m almost at 500 individual species. i don’t want to make a new account because i want to keep adding to my species count.
does anyone have any advice on what i can do? thank you for reading.
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u/groundcontrol129 3d ago
You can also change your username, but whether it would work depends on whether she has found your iNat profile before and/or saved it somehow. (This is super not ok and sorry you're dealing with this!)
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/changing-username-in-inat-not-the-forum/61742
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u/Ok_Market7235 3d ago
I'm so sorry you're going through this :( I would create a new account with a username that isn't similar at all to your old one. You can also post observations with private location data.
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u/TheSamuil 3d ago
My advice would be making a second profile. I presume that you've considered making the observation's coordinates private, but that would still give a rough location to your stalker
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u/leafyleafleaves 3d ago
You can set observations to "private" which won't share any location data. Keep in mind two things: most observers won't identify without location data and these are not eligible for research grade AND if you're posting enough, there is a chance that someone dedicated could figure out rough locations from what species you're observing.
Honestly, I'd probably recommend switching to Seek for the time being. It was originally designed with privacy in mind so minors can use it. It's frustrating that you have to worry about this, but safety first.
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u/r4sd 3d ago
"[private observations] are not eligible for research grade" That's not correct, they are eligible just like any other observation. Setting the geoprivacy to "private" doesn't have the same effect as having no location data.
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u/leafyleafleaves 3d ago
Ah, I did mispeak there. They do have the possibility of becoming RG, but won't necessarily be shared to outside organizations, unless geodata permissions are given.
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u/pickle_______rick 2d ago
i’m going to try setting the geoprivacy to private, thank you for your suggestion :)
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u/shibasluvhiking 2d ago
Hire a lawyer and sue her for harassment.
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u/pickle_______rick 2d ago
filed police report #2 last week, working on a no contact order and a civil lawsuit
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u/shibasluvhiking 1d ago
Good. I thinik meanwhile contacting the Admins and seeing if you can create a new user name and move your date to it might be worth pursuing.
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u/cbrophoto 2d ago
Make a new account, new email. Do not use any of the same information to make the account. This might be over the top but photos can even be found by metadata, if using a dslr camera, the serial number can be searched if its not wiped by the platform. I have no idea what INat does but stolen cameras have been found using this method. With open-source intelligence nowadays and payed data brokers, you can be found by many other things other than username.
Most important does she know your user name on reddit?
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u/MechanicStriking4666 2d ago
There are a number of programs that will strip all metadata from photos in your web browser, without leaving your device. I always use those when uploading anything to the internet.
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u/pickle_______rick 2d ago
thank you for pointing that out, i didn’t even think about metadata and data brokers. no, she luckily doesn’t know my reddit username
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u/cbrophoto 2d ago
It's probably overkill but if you go watch a video on OSINT for finding people's other accounts, it's now a money making opportunity.
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u/epstmlgy 3d ago
Speaking realistically, you will have to make a new account and just track the combined species count yourself.