Oops! I signed up as a sitter for a year before asking this–
Does the public have any access to our photos and profile? Can we use a fake name to keep our privacy? If not, is there a way to get a refund on our membership if our info has yet to go live?
Thanks!
Welcome to the forum @2Travel
Non-members can register for a free account which gives them access to see sitters profile’s and owners listings - for sitters it shows your first name only ( not your surname ) and your photo .
Using a fake name will not help you if you are trying to apply for house sits . The homeowners who are entrusting their home and precious pets into your care need to know and trust that you are who you say you are .
THS offer a refund if you haven’t used your membership and cancel it within 14 days of joining or auto-renewing .
If you are concerned that neighbours etc would see you, you can set your location to a different city of country. For example to a country where you want to do a pet sit.
As others have said only your first name will appear. This is a name that homeowners will refer to you by, and some homeowners might want more information and could be slightly thrown off if you go by “Stevie” in your profile but your real name is something not even close.
When petparents are randomly looking for sitters, or looking for sitters in a location, your photo with a link to your profile might appear. Most people don’t look for sitters in that manner. They post listings and sitters apply, so the chance of someone randomly seeing your photos is slight. However, THS also advertises by showing sitter profiles publicly to tell potential petparents: “See all the sitters we have!” If for example, I decided I wanted to see local sitters in my community, I’d be able to filter for that location and see photos (faces) of the sitters. So the only workaround would be something where your face isn’t clear.
If you aren’t actively applying for sits, you could keep the photos that appear on your profile, down to one that doesn’t actually show you clearly, but then if you were going to apply, you’d need to quickly get more photos up as this is something petparents will be looking at. (I’m always impressed by photos showing the sitter looking natural and at ease around pets.)
As a host, I would be wary of inviting a sitter who seemed to be hiding something.
Thank you, Piet.