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About eBird

Data Privacy Issues

In rare cases observers do not wish to have their names associated with their records, want to conceal the names of certain locations, or even want to hide observations or locations from the public. As eBird’s output tools have developed to be more precise, we now offer the ability to allow users to hide personal information if they wish. Remember, however, the concept of eBird revolves around sharing data with others, and hiding data from the public and from scientists should only be done when absolutely necessary. We leave this judgment in your hands. Below are a few tips for increasing your privacy.

How do I prevent my name from appearing with my observations? Once you’re logged into eBird you can go to ‘My eBird’ and then click on ‘Edit my profile’ on the lower right.  Here you can change the information in the ‘First name’ and ‘Last name’ fields and instead of putting your name there you can enter ‘Anonymous User’ by putting ‘Anonymous’ in the first name field, and then by putting ‘User’ in the last name field.  These changes may take 24 hr to propagate to all eBird output tools.

How do I change the name of my house so that others won’t know the address? Go to ‘My eBird’ and then click ‘Manage my locations’.  Click the ‘Edit’ link next to the location whose name you wish to change.  On the resulting page simply type the new name (e.g., My Backyard – Ithaca) and then click ‘Rename’. These changes may take 24 hr to propagate to all eBird output tools.

How do I conceal an observation or location from the public?  eBird offers the ability to ‘hide’ a checklist from the public, which effectively removes the data from all eBird output. You can accomplish this by doing the following. After entering the data go to ‘My eBird’ and then click on ‘Manage my observations’.  Click the ‘View or edit’ link next to the checklist you wish to hide.  On the resulting page click ‘hide’ at the bottom right.  Be aware that by doing this you are essentially invalidating the record in the database, which will subsequently hide the data and the location from all eBird output tools.  If, after a period of time you wish to expose the record simply repeat the process above but click ‘unhide’ on the lower right.  This will make the record public along with the location. These changes will be reflected immediately on the eBird Google Maps tool.