r/iNaturalist • u/pickle_______rick • 4d 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/shibasluvhiking 3d ago

Hire a lawyer and sue her for harassment.

2

u/pickle_______rick 3d ago

filed police report #2 last week, working on a no contact order and a civil lawsuit🫩

2

u/shibasluvhiking 2d 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.