Hi, I am curious if non members of Trusted House sitters who may be just browsing the site, actually have access to find sitter/info like location or access to read profiles. I am asking because I have a friend who is not a member but wants me to visit her and was looking up some information regarding a house sit near where she lives. Although SHE herself is not a member, she was able to read the profile of a HO in need for a sitter near where she resides. I am curious if just any person browsing the site, can see house sitters information in the same manner.
Hi @Jasmine - For clarification, anyone who wants to browse the website has to provide an email address first to create a free account. They can then browse sits and sitters but they are unable to apply to sits or invite sitters without choosing a plan and paying for a membership.
Hope that answers your question. All the best, Vanessa and the forum team
I have received messages from non members via Facebook and Instagram several times. I do not know how they had access to my THS profile, though. Probably, they could only see my name and looked it up online.
A surname is not necessary to locate people on social media or the Internet in general. Any info included in the profile can be used in searches, e.g images, first name/location/profession/hobbies/nick
p.s. I found you. It took me exactly 2 sec … your surname begins with D
Yes, I agree that it’s not hard to find someone on social media via other means, especially someone who is out there as much as I am. I have a massive SM footprint. My point is that there’s nothing on THS that identifies sitters to non-members, or even full members for that matter if you don’t want to be found (for example, don’t use the same photos as you have on FB etc).
Also, non-members do not have access to our profiles with personal information. They may have some info about us if they search on the forum instead of the main website, but only if we share that info and Nelbar has not done that.
An example. If I search for a house sitter in Kelowna, when I’m logged out of my account, this is all I see. There is not enough info to go by to find that same sitter on FB or IG. Maybe maybe if you screenshot their image, and do a reverse image search and their first name, AND they’ve used the same photo on SM, you might be able to find them. But it very unlikely to be an effective way to find a sitter.
Nelbar was being contacted by non-members on FB and IG and was concerned that their info on THS was the source. I don’t believe that would be the case, and I suspect the people contacting them got their name from someplace else.
Sorry for taking a bit long to reply you. I don’t know how the people who contacted me managed to see my first name on my THS profile. I didn’t get so surprised, though, because I know that in the country I live there are only two people with my name. I don’t have facebook anymore, but I had it when two people wrote me via messenger and another one via instagram. At the time I received the messages, I thought it was because THS was using my profile to advertise the website on the web. I didn’t put thoughts into that very much, but I obviously didn’t let them sit for my dog.
