People using photos from Google.

[M. Nicolai]

I've come across people using photos they didn't take a few times.  Some of them have stated right in the observation description that the photo was taken from Google. I'm thinking that maybe they think that as long as they state that, then it is okay. Sometimes they will show a blurry unrecognizable photo as a secondary photo and then a professional looking one as the main photo and state that they couldn't get a good enough photo so they got one from Google. I'm hesitant to instantly flag their photos and scare them off the site, since I really think they don't get what they did wrong. So I've posted a comment like the one I just did below and if they don't respond or do anything within a few days then I'll flag the photos.

I just noticed that for this observation and all your other ones, you include in the description "Images taken from google". As a new user you may not know that you can submit casual observations without any photos to document your sightings, and should not submit photos that you did not photograph yourself. Submitting photos to the site applies a copyright to them stating that they are your photos as seen here. http://www.inaturalist.org/photos/9121360 

This practice also defeats the purpose of having other people verify your sighting by reviewing the photo since the photo is not of the actual organism you saw. Below is the iNaturalist policy on this.
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#observations8

You can remove these photos from your observations and mark them as casual observations. That way they can still be used to document what you have seen for your own purposes, but they will not be verified by others or used for research purposes.

I can't recall when I first started using iNat how clearly this information was stated. I also don't use the app to submit sightings and was wondering if information about proper photo use is prominently featured there? The fact that some of these people are clearly stating that the photos are not theirs makes me believe they are not trying to deceive, and just don't understand proper photo use.

[Charlie Hohn]

Thanks for finding it. you can flag as copyright infringement and it will remove the photos. If it's chronic you can email the admins to look at it. 

I think we need a wiki page to link to that describes why people shouldn't do this. But, I haven't had time to create one.

[M. Nicolai]

I didn't get a response to my comment I left for the user. They did however remove the photos promptly and seem to be using their own photos for observations added since then. I didn't want to scare off a new user by immediately slapping them with a copyright infringement flag when it was seemingly just a misunderstanding of how these things work.

[Charlie Hohn]

yeah, that is understandable, if they remove the photos there is no need to use the copyright flag. Especially since it seems like it was an honest mistake. Sometimes students do this when they are assigned to use iNat, because they are trying to cheat, which is different.

Thanks for dealing with this.