Some data privacy laws, like the European Union's General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR), require explicit consent to transfer
personal information from their jurisdictions to other jurisdictions
where the legal protection of this information is not considered
adequate. As of
2020,
the European Union no longer considers the United States to be a
jurisdiction that provides adequate legal protection of personal
information, specifically because of the possibility of the US government
surveilling data entering the US. It is possible other jurisdictions
may have the same opinion.
Using iNaturalist requires the storage of personal information like your
email address, all iNaturalist data is stored in the United States, and
we cannot be sure what legal jurisdiction you are in when you are using
iNaturalist, so in order to comply with privacy laws like the GDPR, you
must acknowledge that you understand and accept this risk and consent
to transferring your personal information to iNaturalist's servers in
the US.
To learn more about what information we collect and how we use it,
please see our
Privacy Policy
and our Terms of Use.
There is no way to have an iNaturalist account without storing personal
information, so the only way to revoke this consent is to delete your
account.