Biodiversity data may be considered sensitive because it is a threatened or endangered species, illegally collected, privacy concerns, or other reasons. VAL works with state and federal agencies as well as with data providers to obtain authoritative lists of species considered to be sensitive due to conservation concerns. VAL has not been designed to handle privacy related sensitivity concerns. VAL works to enable data for sensitive records to be annotated, withheld or spatially-generalized. Users are informed whenever data has been modified or withheld.