Should Sitters Have More Control Over Profile Privacy?

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1

I’ve recently been thinking about privacy on TrustedHousesitters, particularly from the sitter side, and I’m curious whether other members have thought about this too.

One thing I noticed is that the Reviews section of a sitter’s profile shows the dates of previous sits, along with the location. Over time, this can create quite a detailed timeline of when someone was away from their home and where they were staying.

I completely understand why reviews, general locations and information about the animals are helpful. They show experience and help homeowners decide whether someone might be a good fit. But I’m not sure the exact dates of each sit add much value, especially when weighed against the potential privacy and personal safety concerns of having a history of your movements visible on your profile.

I’d personally like to see either the dates removed from the public-facing Reviews section or an option for sitters to choose whether those dates are displayed.

The other thing I haven’t been able to find is a way to temporarily make a sitter profile completely private or non-discoverable while keeping your membership and profile active.

I think this would be a really useful privacy feature. There could be lots of reasons someone might want to take a break from being discoverable without deleting their profile or membership. Maybe you’re not looking for sits for a while, your circumstances have changed temporarily, or you simply want more control over when other members can find and view your profile.

Ideally, I’d love to see two additional privacy controls for sitters:

• The ability to hide the exact dates of previous sits while keeping the review, general location and animal information visible.

• A “hide my profile” or “private profile” setting that temporarily makes your sitter profile non-discoverable without deleting it or affecting your membership.

I’m curious what other sitters and homeowners think. Do you find the exact dates of previous sits useful when looking at a sitter’s profile? And would you use an option to temporarily hide your profile if one were available?

It feels like members should have a little more control over how much of their travel history and profile information is visible to others.

2

I find the dates useful, sure it lets me know how long the sit is and that could easily be altered by just showing number of nights, but more than that it shows frequency. It shows if a sitter is more or less full time or not. It shows if a host is frequently away. I’ve seen two sits with same sitters with a one day gap, that always has me thinking so the sitter had to leave for one night while the host came back? It’s just another way to screen for me. I would be more concerned as a host personally as it shows dates they will not be home. If they don’t get a sitter house might be empty. However that seems like a lot of trouble if you are looking to for a house to break into. I guess at the end of the day most of us have a lot of personal info that is findable if you are determined enough.

3

The hiding profile option could be useful…I know other sites have that feature.

I think the dates of the sit can be useful as it can be helpful for hosts to know if sitters have experience doing longer term sits, if that is something that is important to them. That could also be accomplished with just listing the sit length though. There might be some other reasons it has value as well.

I personally have no concerns with this sort of information being visible on my profile. I can’t imagine anyone deliberately seeking out this type of information on a housesitting site to use for nefarious purposes on some random person they don’t know.

Now if a sitter is concerned a specific person that they already know may want to track their movements for some reason, I can understand being concerned that information available on a profile that can be accessed by anyone, may endanger them somehow.

It’s not like someone who robs houses deliberately tracking people’s travel plans on social media to decide which houses to hit. While our profiles are public, I imagine the only people really looking at them are hosts of the sits to which we have applied. I personally have no reason that I would want to hide my travel history–I don’t see how that information could be used against me in any negative way.

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There are many reasons other than the cited “away from home” security issue. Job searching–I don’t want potential employers (nor current ones) to find my profile and make certain assumptions about me. I don’t want insurers (I’m American) to find it. I do not want a stalker to find it.

I used AI to search for my face. Guess what? The only source of a match was this website. And it was an old photo – so the technology was able to search me looking 10 years younger and linking directly to the THS profile.

5

Wow Katie, that’s amazing, to me at least. Hadn’t thought about employers checking you out on the basis of where you live, or insurers for that matter. Brave New world :wink::person_facepalming:

6

I once managed to contact another sitter who had completed a sit I was interested in doing, but hadn’t left a review. The missing review, coupled with slightly odd correspondence from the home owner following my application had set alarm bells ringing. The former sitter’s profile gave enough information for me to track them down via google (and they confirmed my gut instint that the sit was one to avoid, despite looking amazing!) I had a genuine reason for wanting to connect, but the fact that I had managed to obtain a phone number for a fellow sitter relatively easily did cause me to review the level of personal information within my own profile accordingly.

I agree that the option to ‘hide profile’ when not actively seeking sits would be sensible.

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I’m on the same page as you, @Cathie; as a paid subscriber I find this information helpful in a number of situations.

I don’t mean to seem dismissive to the OP as I do generally share concerns about online privacy. But I feel this is a horse that’s already left the barn at this point…and my THS profile and (past) sit history is some of the most innocuous info Joe Stalker is going to find on me. At the same time, we’ve got Flock cameras/CCTV tracking our movements in real time…and how many THS members are using WhatsApp for communication, or posting their travel pics on FB, X, & Insta? (As an aside: if Meta owns it, they’re not just tracking & selling your info…you’ve also opted in to sharing your Contacts’ info as well.)

I do think it would be reasonable to restrict the data non-members or free account holders can see, & hide some specific details — or as suggested, allow members to choose to limit it for unpaid accounts & people who aren’t logged in. But lacking specific examples, I’m having a hard time seeing how specific dates for my past sit in a general location are a security concern. (Perhaps of more concern are the calendars which show me as “busy” when I have a sit scheduled, as this indicates I’m not going to be home — but doesn’t actually say where I will be.)

8

@GFM, welcome to THS Forum. Great first post!

From housesitting and general life, we find that there’s a huge spectrum of views in regards awareness & sensitivity towards privacy of personal data.

Perhaps like yourself, we’re at the cautious side of privacy. Heck, when we sell possessions on FB Marketplace then it amuses us that buyers call us by the name of our late dog (as that’s the name of our FB profile :face_savoring_food:). After pet parents left property, we have a bug sweep tool to find devices :wink:. We disconnect power to all pet parent audio & recording devices. We are generally careful. Nothing at all to hide, we’d just rather discourage privacy invasion from US tech firms.

For THS, we wonder whether could be a privacy toggle setting. If someone is not actively housesitting/hosting, or other reason, then they could choose to limit public features. This may credibly impact any housesit applications - as we agree that some pet parents with long-duration housesits seek housesitters that have experience with prior long-duration housesits.

Maybe there’s another way. But the concept of optional public disclosures of private personal data is one that we support.

9

I could see removing the specific dates of a sit, but see it as essential that the duration remain. As sitters and homeowners both, we pay a great deal of attention to the duration/review content patterns, which are often very different.