To Obscure, make Private or leave your observation Public/Open?

Ive had a reasonable look but cant find an answer to this question. Im wondering if any location information is stored with the PRIVATE setting cf OBSCURED where a precise location is stored but only available to trusted rather than general users?

There is no real reason to every obscure an observation. All species threatened by collecting/poaching/harvesting are automatically obscured. If you disagree that a species should be obscured (and to qualify it must be threatened - with a Red List category, and it must be a collectable/poachable - not threatened by habitat loss or aliens or fire or climate change or habitat degradation: which as a rule dont use iNaturalist too much) then please raise it with the Sensitive Species list: at http://nssl.sanbi.org.za/

There is no point in posting private observations: they are useless. The coordinates are on iNaturalist, but are accessible as nowhere (obscured observations show up on a 20km grid, so are accessible by municipality, province, country).
@susanfawcett presents a very interesting temporary reason for doing so. The problem is that they dont show up on any country or place searches, so they will probably never be identified, and they can never be research grade and thus useful to anyone.

Obscured information is stored, but hidden. It is available to SANBI staff biennielly for Red List and Research purposes, but this only applies after we have become a community. At this stage we dont get these dumps so cannot access these data.
It is available if you trust someone (not recommended, but an example might be the landowner - assuming you trust them not to eradicate them for developments), or if you trust the curators of a project (we recommend that you use Habitats, CREW and RedList projects for these: before trusting any other project please carefully check the credentials of all the curators, and report any suspicious people to SANBI).
Valid reasons for manually obscuring an observation is because it will allow an auto-obscured species to be located (e.g. a bird observation pollinating a threatened species), or because the land-owner places such a restriction on the data collection (but try and convince them that it is counterproductive as they wont be able to use iNaturalist to get a checklist for their farm, as the observations wont display for the farm), or because you may be liable for costs if your observation affects the value of a locality (e.g. aliens decreasing the value of a property for sale, threatened species threatening a development). Unacceptable reasons that people use may include hiding trespassing incursions, observations of illegal activities, or personal information (e.g. home gardens - some people hide them, others create projects to showcase them, but most people dont even think about it).
Obscuring is a two-edge sword. It hides localities from potential poachers, but it also hides it from those who might look after, monitor, manage it: poachers dont only use iNaturalist to get localities, they also use it to find out which localities are unknown and therefore safer to poach. It also means a delay in conservation authorities (researchers, planners, EIA consultants, reserve managers) accessing data as they have to obtain if from SANBI via the twice a year dumps, or from one of the three curated projects designed for this (CREW, Habitat, Redlist).

Whatever you do, never put a false locality. Apart from the conservation implications: a useless piece of land may be protected or purchased to conserve something that does not occur there - but more importantly, the actual locality may be approved for development because there are no records there, or a researcher may spend valuable time trying to find the population for sampling or studying, or it may change the Red Listing status for the species by adding incorrect population and location data; it is also unethical and may result your being disbarred from using iNaturalist.

There is a grey area of adding imprecise data (with a high Location Error), but that is not useful if you wish your data to be used to help protect and conserve a species. Imprecise data are usually discarded by most serious studies requiring accurate data: the more precise your data (even if obscured), the more useful it is for authorities, researchers and conservation officials. The app allows a 5-10m accuracy for the locality, which is ideal for almost all uses of data.
Localities without an error (stored under "Accuracy", and shown as a circle around the peg on the web version map) are treated as dubious, and you will sooner or later get a message to please fix your localities that dont have the error recorded. It is important not to over-state your accuracy: if you dont know exactly where you were, then put in an appropriately large location error (=Accuracy).

It is easy enough to test. Simply make an observation of yours private: YOU can still see the locality: just no one else on earth. Then make it open again and it reappears. So the precise location is stored, it is just not hidden to 22km as with obscure, but to nowhere if you private it.

Thanks - thats clear ( and having worked as ‘ one of the authorities’ for 40 years I have a good knowledge of how imperfect the system of regulating is).