The PetHour™ platform is operated by ITPro Solutions LLC, a Pennsylvania limited liability company (“PetHour”, “we”, “our”, or “us”). We operate the marketplace platform at pethour.app that connects pet owners (“Owners”) with independent pet care providers — dog walkers, pet sitters, groomers, trainers, pet-transport drivers, and other pet care specialists (“Caregivers”). ITPro Solutions LLC is responsible for the personal data described in this Privacy Policy, which explains what personal data we collect, how we use it, with whom we share it, and what rights you have over it.
PetHour is a marketplace platform only. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of any Caregiver or Owner you interact with through the platform. When you share personal information — including pet medical data or your home address — with another user for the purpose of a booking, you do so at your own discretion and risk.
Where we operate. PetHour is offered only in the United States (Terms, Section 1) and is not directed at people in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or any other country. PetHour’s own servers — the application, its database, and the files you upload — are located in the United States. The service providers listed in Section 4 run their own systems and may store or process data in the United States or in other countries under their own privacy terms and safeguards; we choose providers that protect personal data, but we do not control where they keep it.
When you create a PetHour account we collect your name, email address, and password hash. After signup you may optionally add a profile photo, biography, and service area. A verified mobile phone number is required for all members as a security and trust measure — it confirms you are a real, reachable person, prevents duplicate accounts, secures account recovery, and lets an Owner and Caregiver reach each other during an active booking. Providing your number does not subscribe you to any ongoing text messages; those are separately optional and off by default, as described in Section 2.9.
Signing in with Google or Apple (optional). Instead of a password you may sign in with Google (Section 5) or with Sign in with Apple. If you use Sign in with Apple, Apple confirms your identity and sends us a unique Apple account identifier and an email address — which, if you choose Apple’s “Hide My Email” option, is a private relay address that Apple forwards to your real inbox. We store the identifier only to recognise you when you sign in again, and use the email address as your account email. We do not keep the name Apple may share, we receive no Apple password, and we use this data only to create and access your PetHour account. You can stop using Sign in with Apple at any time from your Apple ID settings (“Sign in with Apple” → PetHour).
Identity verification is mandatory for all members before booking features are unlocked. It is performed by Stripe Identity on our behalf: you photograph a government-issued ID and take a selfie, and Stripe compares the geometry of your face in the selfie with the photo on the ID to confirm that you are the person on it. That comparison uses biometric information. Before it starts we ask for your separate written consent (a checkbox on the verification page), and we keep a record of that consent: the exact wording, its version, the time, your IP address, and your device. The record outlives your account — when you delete it, the IP address and device are removed and the rest is kept for 4 years (Section 6).
PetHour never receives or keeps your ID images, your selfie, or any face data. Stripe processes and stores them under its own privacy policy and retention settings, uses them only to verify your identity for PetHour, and never sells them. From the verification we receive and keep the outcome (verified or not), a reference to the Stripe verification session, and the details Stripe confirms from your ID: your legal first and last name, date of birth, and address.
How long the biometric information is kept. It is kept only for the purpose it was collected for — verifying the identity behind your account — and we have Stripe permanently destroy it when that purpose ends or 12 months after your last interaction with PetHour, whichever comes first — a single limit that meets every state’s biometric rules, including Colorado’s, Illinois’s, and Texas’s. We do this by instructing Stripe to redact every verification session you started, including attempts that did not succeed; redaction deletes the ID images, the selfies, and the face data Stripe holds for them, and Stripe completes it within a few days. That happens:
Our biometric data policy. This section is PetHour’s written policy for biometric information: the purpose above, the retention schedule above, and the destruction steps above. We also keep an internal incident-response protocol for it: if biometric information or the verification records described here are ever exposed, we contain the incident, work with Stripe to establish what happened, have the affected verification sessions redacted, and notify you and the authorities as the law requires. Under Washington and Nevada law this biometric information is also consumer health data; our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy explains your rights for it.
If you add pets to your account we collect the name, species, breed, age, weight, known behavioral traits, reactivity, bite history, medical conditions, medication details, the vaccines your pet has had and the date each is good until, or that a veterinarian advised against one (required to book a dog or cat, Terms Section 4.4), dietary requirements, emergency contacts, and veterinary information you choose to provide. This information is shared with Caregivers you book. You are solely responsible for the accuracy and completeness of pet profile information. Incomplete or inaccurate pet profiles may create safety risks that PetHour cannot be held responsible for.
Your emergency contact. You may add an emergency contact — their name, relationship to you, and phone number. Before they can be reached through a PetHour private line during an active booking (Section 2.14), you must confirm that they agreed to be contacted. We record that confirmation (the wording, its version, the time, your IP address, and your device) with a keyed one-way fingerprint (hash) of their number, and changing the number ends it. Their real number is never shown to the other member.
We record booking requests, confirmations, cancellations, and dispute records, together with the events that govern when a Caregiver is paid: when the Caregiver marks a service delivered, when the Owner confirms it (or it auto-confirms after the review window), and when a payout is released or held. Payment is processed by Stripe — we do not store full card numbers, CVVs, or bank account credentials. We retain transaction amounts, timestamps, Stripe payment identifiers, payout-release and confirmation timestamps, and platform fee records for billing, audit, and dispute resolution. If you and another member choose to arrange or pay for care off the platform (Terms, Section 4.2), that transaction is not processed by PetHour and we hold no record of it — we cannot see, store, refund, or mediate a payment that never passed through the platform.
For GPS-tracked walks and Care Bundle sessions, the Caregiver’s device transmits location data while the visit is active, and a visit photo can record the place it was taken (for its city label). This data is stored on our servers, associated with the booking, and made available to the booking Owner as a route summary and metrics, and it is deleted 12 months after the visit (Section 6). Visit reports are private. A route starts and ends at the Owner’s home, so the visit report page, its route animation, and its Visit Movie are shown only to the booking Owner when signed in — and to the Caregiver who did the visit within that booking, and PetHour staff reviewing a dispute about it. The report page is not public and is not indexed by search engines; you can download the movie and the route to keep or share them yourself. We do not sell GPS data. To label visit photos and route reports with the city they were taken in, we send coordinates — a photo’s, or the first location of a walk or session — rounded to about 1 km, to the OpenStreetMap Nominatim geocoding service, which returns the city name; nothing else about you or the visit is sent. Maps in PetHour are drawn from OpenStreetMap map tiles: your browser or app downloads them directly from OpenStreetMap’s tile servers, which therefore see your IP address and the area of the map being shown, and our servers download tiles for the same area to draw route animations. The GPS coordinates themselves are never sent to an AI service; only the route distance and visit length derived from them are used in AI-written visit summaries (Section 2.18).
Photos, videos, and voice notes captured by Caregivers during a visit are stored on PetHour’s own servers (Section 9) and are available to the booking Owner and to the Caregiver who captured them. Video clips record sound as well as pictures. Photos and videos are stored without the metadata cameras embed in them, such as the location and the device. They are deleted 12 months after the visit (Section 6); you can download them before then (Section 7). Voice notes are converted to a standard audio format on our servers so they play on every device, and are transcribed automatically on PetHour’s own servers by open-source speech recognition running on our hardware — the audio is not sent to any third-party speech service. The transcript is stored with the note and can be opened by the Owner and the Caregiver under it. Photos, videos and audio are never sent to an AI service; the text facts our AI features use are listed in Section 2.18. An Owner agrees to these recordings when booking, and a Caregiver may not post or share visit media outside PetHour without the Owner’s agreement (Terms of Service, Section 15).
Every Caregiver on a paid plan and every team member completes a background check before the plan starts or they join, and again every two years; a Caregiver on the free trial may order one (Terms of Service, Section 11). Each check is run by Checkr, a consumer reporting agency, after Checkr shows you its disclosure and you authorize the check on Checkr’s own pages; Checkr collects the identifying details it needs, such as your Social Security number, directly. Checkr tells us the result — clear, or consider when the report lists records — and references to the report. When a report lists records, PetHour staff review those records through Checkr to decide whether to accept the check, following the adverse action process in the Terms (Section 11). We keep the status of each check, the date it is valid until, the dates of each step of that process, and our reviewer’s reasons; we do not copy the report itself into PetHour. Owners see only whether a Caregiver’s check counts, and a team’s business sees only whether a member’s does — never the report. When an Owner books a Caregiver on the free trial who has not completed a background check, or lets such Caregivers reply to a Last Minute Request, we record the Owner’s confirmation of that choice, with the wording shown and when it was given. Checkr’s handling of your data is governed by its own privacy policy and by the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
To deliver push notifications, we collect and store Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) tokens: a web push token for your browser session on the website, and a device token for each iPhone, iPad, or Android device on which you use our mobile apps. These tokens are used solely to route push notifications to your devices. You may revoke push notification permission at any time from your browser or device settings. Revoking permission will invalidate your token and stop push delivery; SMS delivery (if enabled) will continue independently.
No mobile information — including your phone number and your SMS consent — will be shared with or sold to third parties or affiliates for their own marketing or promotional purposes. All text messaging opt-in data and consent is expressly excluded from any data sharing. Mobile information is shared only with the vendor that delivers our messages on our behalf (Twilio), which may not use it for any other purpose.
Phone verification (required). When you enter your mobile number and tap Send Code, you request and consent to receive a single one-time passcode by SMS. We may also send a passcode when you sign in from a new device or reset your password. These are transactional security messages, not marketing, and are required to use the platform. Message and data rates may apply.
Ongoing text messages (optional). Verifying your number does not enroll you in any ongoing text messages. Ongoing SMS is off unless you affirmatively opt in by checking the box — presented unchecked — during phone verification, or by enabling it later in Preferences → Notifications → Text messages (SMS). There is a single opt-in:
| Category | What you receive | Typical frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Bookings, visit updates & messages | For Caregivers: new booking requests, backup (standby) requests, and Last Minute Request alerts. For everyone: calls and texts routed through a temporary private (masked) number so you and the other party can reach each other during an active booking or care bundle without sharing real numbers (see Section 2.14). Before we add another kind of text to this category, we update this list. | Varies with your activity; typically 0–10 messages per week. |
PetHour does not send marketing or promotional text messages, and does not send account-security alerts by text. Those (offers, referral bonuses, product news, sign-in and payout-change alerts) are sent by email only. Consent to receive booking text messages is not a condition of creating an account or of purchasing any goods or services. If you decline, you receive the same information by email and in-app notification. Note that opting out of SMS for Last Minute Requests means you will receive those alerts by push notification only, which may reduce your ability to respond within the required time window.
Cost and frequency. Message frequency varies as described above. Message and data rates may apply under your plan with your mobile carrier. PetHour does not charge you for text messages. Our messages are supported on major US carriers, and carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.
How to stop messages. Reply STOP (or QUIT, END, CANCEL, UNSUBSCRIBE, REVOKE, or OPT OUT) to any PetHour text message to cancel all further messages — you will receive one confirmation message and then no further texts. Asking in your own words also works — for example by replying “please stop texting me”, in Preferences, or by email to support — and we stop within 10 business days at the latest. Reply START to resume messaging — if you had turned booking texts on before, they resume automatically. Reply HELP for support information, or email support@pethour.app. You may also turn booking texts on or off at any time in Preferences → Notifications → Text messages (SMS).
Consent records. When you grant or withdraw consent we record the date and time, the exact wording you were shown, the method used, and the originating IP address. We retain these records for at least four years so that your choices can be honored and demonstrated to a carrier or regulator on request. See Section 6 for retention details. If someone texts STOP or START to our number from a phone number that has no PetHour account, we keep that number, the keyword and the time for 4 years, so that the opt-out is honored and can be shown.
PetHour stores the in-app messages members send one another — within a booking’s conversation, a Care Bundle’s scheduling room, and (where enabled) a pre-booking conversation started from a member’s profile. For each message we store its text, timestamps, read status, and the conversation it belongs to. If you choose to send a voice message, we store the recording as an audio file with that conversation (converted to a standard format so it plays on every device), together with its length, a small waveform image, and an automatic transcript made on PetHour’s own servers (no third-party speech service), which both people in the conversation can open under the message. Starting a new pre-booking conversation requires a verified identity and a confirmed phone number. This content may be reviewed by PetHour support staff in connection with a dispute or a report of misconduct, and to enforce our Terms. It is not shared with third parties for their own purposes. Messages are retained until 24 months after the associated booking or bundle ends (it is completed, expires, or is cancelled) or after the last message in the conversation, whichever is later — for a pre-booking conversation, 24 months after its last message — and longer only while a dispute about that booking or bundle is open (Section 6). When you delete your account, or ask us to (Section 7), the content of every message you sent — its words, any recording, and its transcript — is erased, and the other member sees “Message removed” in its place. You can turn off receipt of new pre-booking messages, and block or report another member, at any time.
We maintain a wallet ledger recording all credits and debits to your platform wallet, including gift certificate redemptions, referral rewards, promotional credits, and booking payments. Gift certificate records include the issuer, recipient email, amount, redemption status, and timestamps. This data is kept for at least 7 years after the year of the transaction, for financial compliance (Section 6).
When you join through someone’s referral link, we record the link between the two accounts — who referred whom, and when. We use that link for two purposes: to release referral credits when they are earned, and to enforce the arms-length rule in our Terms (Section 7), which requires us to check, at the moment a booking completes, whether the referrer is a participant in that booking. That check compares account identifiers on a single booking; it does not profile you, and it produces no output other than whether one credit is released.
We do not infer, record, or act on any household, family, or personal relationship between users. The referral link is the only relationship we hold, and it exists only because one of you followed the other’s invitation. Referral records are retained for 7 years alongside the credits they govern; the link is visible to the referrer and to the person referred (on request), and is not shared with other users or third parties. The referrer’s referral list shows you by your display name (“New member” if you have none) and whether you have booked or offered a service yet — the events that earn their credit — never your email address or anything else about your account.
We collect standard server logs including IP addresses, browser type, pages visited, referring URLs, session duration, and error events, and the text of replies sent to PetHour’s text-message number, with the number they came from. We also record the IP address each sign-in session was started from, to protect your account. We use this data to maintain platform security, detect fraud, and improve the service. Log data, and the IP addresses of sign-in sessions, are retained for 90 days.
Profile views. When someone opens a Caregiver’s profile, or a service on it, we record that a view happened and when, so the Caregiver’s Insights can show how many people saw their profile. Caregivers see counts, never who viewed. For a signed-in viewer we note who it was only to avoid counting the same person twice within 30 minutes, and clear that after a day; the view record itself is deleted after 12 months (Section 6).
Approximate location from your IP address. To show caregivers near you before you enter a ZIP code, we look up the approximate location of your IP address with ipinfo.io, which returns a city, ZIP code, and coordinates. We keep each lookup — the IP address and what ipinfo returned — for 30 days.
Product analytics. To learn which features help and where people get stuck, we use Google Analytics on our website and Google Analytics for Firebase in our mobile apps. They record which screens you open and what you do on them — for example, a search for a service type, a booking request, a purchase amount, or a review’s star rating — together with your device and browser type, app version, and an approximate location (city level) that Google derives from your IP address. Signed-in activity is linked to a pseudonymous account identifier (a random ID, never your name or email) so that your use across the website and the apps can be counted as one person.
We never send your name, email address, phone number, home address, ZIP code, messages, reviews’ text, or any secret link or code to Google Analytics; page addresses are stripped of such details before they are sent. We do not collect advertising identifiers (IDFA / Android advertising ID), Google Signals and ad personalization are switched off, and analytics data is never used for advertising. The website’s administration area and our own staff are never tracked. You can switch analytics off at any time (Section 7), and on our website a browser Global Privacy Control signal switches it off automatically.
During an active booking or care bundle, either member may open a temporary phone number (through Twilio) that relays calls and text messages between the pet owner and the caregiver — once both have a verified phone and booking texts and calls turned on; each line lasts up to 24 hours and can be opened again — so that neither party’s real primary number — nor an owner’s emergency-contact number — is disclosed to the other. The temporary number is released once the service is complete or cancelled and may afterwards be reused for other users. We retain only routing metadata about these relayed communications (which party contacted which, when, and whether by call or text) — never the contents of the messages. No masked number is assigned before a booking or bundle exists: pre-booking contact between members is limited to in-app messaging (Section 2.10), and a masked number is provided only after a booking or bundle is confirmed.
If you join an Elite business as a team member, we record that membership, the date it began, and the date and outcome of each booking the automated rotation assigns you — including declines. We use those records for exactly three purposes: to run the rotation itself (which selects whoever has waited longest for a turn), to calculate the flat amounts owed to you, to the business and to PetHour on each completed job, and to show the whole team how work has been shared out. That last one is deliberate: the transparency is what lets any member verify that nobody is being favoured or starved. We also record the dispatch fee the business posts for each service and any changes to it, and we notify you when a fee that affects your pay changes.
Your assignment history is visible to the business you work for and, in summary form, to your fellow team members. It is not shown to pet owners or to any third party. A review of team work is attributed to the member who performed it, and we also record which business the booking was performed under, so that the review counts toward that business's team rating; that link remains after the member leaves. Public reviews of team work therefore show the member who performed the work and the business it was performed under. Membership and assignment records are retained for 7 years alongside the payments they explain.
We send three kinds of email:
Every marketing email identifies itself as promotional, says who it is from and why you received it, includes PetHour’s postal address, and carries a one-click unsubscribe link that works without signing in. We record each marketing email we send (who sent it, to whom, which template, and whether it was sent) and each change to your email choices (the choice, when, how it was made, and the originating IP address), so that we can honour your choices, enforce sending limits, and demonstrate compliance.
PetHour uses your microphone only when you tap a microphone button. Speech-to-text (dictation) into a text box is performed by your device or browser — Apple’s speech recognition on iPhone and iPad, Google’s on Android, or your web browser’s built-in service (for example Google in Chrome, Apple in Safari, Microsoft in Edge) — under that provider’s own privacy terms. PetHour never receives or stores the audio of your dictation, only the text that appears in the box, which is handled like anything else you type. Voice messages and visit voice notes are recordings you choose to send; they are stored, and transcribed on PetHour’s own servers, as described in Sections 2.6 and 2.10. You can withdraw microphone or speech-recognition access at any time in your device or browser settings.
Some features are written with the help of our AI provider, Anthropic (the Claude API). We send only the text facts each feature needs — never photos, videos, audio recordings or GPS coordinates — and under our service agreement Anthropic does not use this data to train its models.
Turning AI off. You can switch off Use AI with my content in Preferences → Notifications → Privacy at any time. While it is off, nothing of yours is sent to Anthropic: summaries of visits you are part of are written by PetHour without AI, chat reply ideas in your conversations use quick replies (for both people), and your message drafts and weekly summary are not AI-written. Because a visit or a chat involves two people, PetHour uses no AI there if either of them has switched it off. The change applies from then on; summaries already written are not rewritten. The support assistant is used only when you choose to chat with it. Every visit summary is labelled as AI-written or not, with an ⓘ listing this data.
To pay Caregivers, PetHour and our payment processor Stripe must verify who is being paid and report earnings to tax authorities. When you set up payouts you provide your legal name, address, date of birth, taxpayer identification number (such as a Social Security number or EIN), and bank account details. Your full taxpayer identification number and bank account number go directly to Stripe and are never stored by PetHour. We keep the other details of your Form W-9 or W-8 — your legal name, address, tax classification, signature, and the last four digits of the number — and the last four digits of the bank account you are paid into. Stripe and PetHour may report your earnings to the IRS and to state tax authorities, for example on Form 1099-K. Tax details are kept while your account exists and for 7 years after it is deleted (Section 6). How you receive your Form 1099: Stripe mails it to you unless you choose electronic delivery in the tax-form settings on your Finances page, where Stripe collects that separate consent (Terms, Section 33).
CPR certificates. If you upload a pet CPR or first-aid certificate to earn the CPR badge, we store the file — which usually shows your name and may show your date of birth and the certifying organisation — with its review status. PetHour staff look at it to decide whether to grant the badge, and record who reviewed it and any reason for a rejection. The file is kept in private storage (Section 9), is never shown to other members (they see only the badge), and is deleted with your account or when you remove it.
Licenses and certificates. If you add a license or certificate to your profile (for example a veterinary-technician license, a dog-trainer certification, or a kennel license), we collect what you tell us about it — its kind, name, issuer, number, issuing state, and expiry date — and the photo or PDF of the document you upload, which usually shows your name and may show your address or date of birth. PetHour staff compare it with the issuer’s public register, or ask the issuer to confirm it, and record the result, the date, the register page, who checked it, and any reason for not approving or for withdrawing it. We use this to decide which services you can be booked for (some can be booked only with a checked credential — Terms of Service, Section 14), to show Owners your checked credentials, to remind you before one expires, to keep members and pets safe, to prevent fraud, to meet legal requirements, and to handle disputes. Owners and anyone viewing your live profile see a checked credential’s name, kind, issuer, number, state, expiry date, the date PetHour checked it, and the register link — never the document. The document is kept as a private file (Section 9): it is served only at a long, randomly generated address given to PetHour staff who review it and to you, is never indexed or cached, and is never shown on your profile. When we check a credential we share only what is needed with its issuer or the public register; we may share a document that appears false or altered with the issuer or the authorities, and we share credential records when the law requires. Messages about your credentials and listings — expiry reminders, decisions, and notices that a listing was blocked or restored — are service messages sent by email and in the app while you list such services. If PetHour blocks one of your listings (Terms, Section 14), we keep a record of the block — the service, dates, reason, and who decided it — with your account’s records. You can remove a credential at any time; services that needed it then stop being bookable.
Pet Language quizzes. When you take a Pet Language quiz, we keep your answers, your score, and whether and when you passed, so that we can award and audit quiz badges. A badge you earn is shown on your public profile; your answers and scores are not. Quiz records are deleted with your account.
Some information is visible beyond the people you book with:
Information that search engines have already copied can stay in their results for a while after a profile is taken offline; search engines refresh their copies on their own schedule.
When you contact us through the Contact page, by email, or through the support assistant, we keep a support ticket: your name and email address, the subject and category, what you write and what our team replies, any screenshots you attach, and the ticket’s dates and status. You can contact us without an account; we then keep the name and email address you give us. Copyright notices also keep the signature you type. PetHour support staff read tickets to answer them; anyone who has a ticket’s private link can read that ticket, so do not share it. If you chat with the support assistant, what you write is sent to Anthropic as Section 2.18 describes. A ticket, its messages and its attachments are deleted 24 months after the last activity on it (Section 6). When you delete your account, your name and email address are removed from your tickets, and the words and screenshots you sent are erased — including in tickets you sent with the same email address without signing in; the ticket’s subject and dates stay as a record that we helped. You can also ask us to erase them while you keep your account (Section 7).
You can invite someone who is not a member by typing their email address — to join PetHour through your referral link, or, for an Elite business, to join your team. PetHour sends that one invitation on your behalf, says who it is from and why it was sent, and includes a Stop PetHour invitations link. We keep the address with the invitation to limit how often anyone can be invited and to show you which invitations you sent, and delete it 90 days after the invitation was sent (an accepted team invitation stays as the record of joining). If the person uses the link, we keep only a keyed one-way fingerprint of their address, never the address itself, so that no one can invite them through PetHour again. If someone asks a business not to invite them to its team again, we keep their email address with that business’s request for as long as the request stands, so it can be honored. We never use these addresses for anything else, and never share them.
A Caregiver can keep private notes about a client in Clients — for example a pet’s preferences or how a household likes things done. A note is shown only to the Caregiver who wrote it: not to the client, and not to any other member. We keep it until the Caregiver deletes it, or until either the Caregiver’s or the client’s account is deleted, and we disclose it only where the law requires (Section 4). Notes must not hold door, gate, or alarm codes or other secrets (Terms of Service, Section 4.13).
We do not use your data for behavioural advertising and we do not sell your personal data to any third party.
We share personal data only as necessary to operate the platform:
Our service providers process your data to provide their services to PetHour and in line with their own privacy terms and applicable data protection law; OpenStreetMap and ipinfo.io receive only what is described above. We do not share your data with data brokers, advertisers, or other marketplaces.
Business transfers. If PetHour, or all or part of its business, is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, bankruptcy, or sale of assets, personal data may be transferred to the buyer or successor as part of that transaction, under confidentiality commitments. The successor must handle the data it receives in line with this Policy, or tell you and give you a choice before using it in a materially different way.
No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. All text messaging opt-in data and consent is expressly excluded from any sharing described above — your mobile number is disclosed only to Twilio for the sole purpose of delivering the messages you asked for. See Section 2.9.
PetHour may disclose personal data — including your identity, account, and transaction information — to law enforcement, regulators, and our payment partners where required or permitted by applicable law, including in response to a subpoena, court order, or other lawful request; to detect, investigate, prevent, or report money laundering, fraud, sanctions violations, or other unlawful activity; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of PetHour, its users, or the public. Where the law requires or permits it, we may report suspected suspicious activity to the appropriate authorities, and we may be prohibited from notifying you that we have done so. See the Terms of Service, Section 19, for how we handle suspected financial crime and fund holds.
Some optional PetHour features rely on Google APIs. This section explains exactly what Google account data we access, how we use it, and the strict limits we place on that use.
calendar.readonly and calendar.events). We use this access solely to keep your PetHour availability and your calendar in sync as you configured it. You can disconnect at any time from your calendar settings, which revokes our access.We do not access Gmail, Google Drive, Google Contacts, Google Photos, or any other Google Workspace or Google Photos data, and we request no scopes for them.
PetHour’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Specifically:
We keep personal data only as long as we need it for the purposes in this Policy, the law requires, or another member needs it. Where a period below ends in deletion, an automatic daily job deletes the data when it ends:
When you delete your account (Section 7), your name, email address, phone number, photos, profile, pet details beyond each pet’s name, species, and breed, saved payment method, calendar and sign-in connections, preferences, and contact lists are removed straight away, and what our providers hold is removed by follow-up steps that normally finish within minutes and always within 30 days: Stripe deletes your customer record and redacts every identity verification you started (Section 2.2), Google and Apple access is revoked, and calendar change notifications are stopped. Microsoft offers no way for us to revoke an Outlook calendar connection, so we delete our access tokens; you can also remove PetHour from your Microsoft account’s app permissions (account.microsoft.com for personal accounts, myapps.microsoft.com for work or school accounts). Records the law or other members need are kept for the periods above without your name — other members see “Former member” in its place on bookings, reviews, and conversations, and the messages you sent read “Message removed” — and visit media stays with the pet owner’s records until its 12 months end. Consent and opt-out records, and a free-trial Caregiver’s trial fingerprints, are kept in de-identified form, using the keyed fingerprints described in Section 3, for the periods above. Content that was already used in PetHour’s promotional materials before you deleted it may remain there (Terms, Section 27).
You have the right to:
Making a request. You can do most of this yourself in the app. For anything else, email support@pethour.app; we respond within 30 days. We verify that a request comes from you: a request made while signed in is verified by your sign-in, and for an email request we confirm that you control the email address on the account and may ask for more information if needed. You may use an authorized agent; we will ask for your signed permission for the agent and may ask you to confirm your identity with us directly.
Appeals. If we decline your request, in whole or in part, we tell you why. You can appeal by replying to our answer, or by emailing support@pethour.app with the subject “Privacy appeal”; we respond to an appeal within 60 days and explain the outcome. If you are not satisfied, you may contact your state attorney general.
No discrimination. We will not deny you service, charge you a different price, or give you a different level of service because you exercised a privacy right — except where the right itself makes a feature impossible, as deleting your account does.
De-identified data. Where we keep data in de-identified form, we keep it that way and do not attempt to re-identify it, except to check that our de-identification works.
Many U.S. states give their residents privacy rights — among them California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. Some of these laws apply to PetHour and some apply only to larger businesses; we offer the same rights to every member, wherever they live:
California residents. PetHour is below the size at which the California Consumer Privacy Act applies, but we follow this notice for every California resident. It summarizes, for each category of personal information that law names, what we collected in the past 12 months, where it comes from, why, and who receives it; Sections 2 to 6 give the details, and Section 6 says how long each is kept.
| Category | Examples | Where it comes from | Why | Who receives it | Sold or shared |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Identifiers | Name, email address, phone number, postal address, IP address, account ID, device and push tokens, a pseudonymous analytics ID, an emergency contact you add | You, your device, Google or Apple sign-in | Your account, bookings, messages, security, analytics | Members you book with or message, as Section 4 describes; the service providers in Section 4 that need it | No |
| Customer records | Legal name, date of birth, and address confirmed from your ID; Form W-9 or W-8 details and signature; last four digits of your taxpayer and bank account numbers; card brand and last four digits | You, Stripe | Identity verification, payments, payouts, tax reporting | Stripe; tax authorities | No |
| Protected characteristics | Your age, from the date of birth on your ID | Stripe Identity | Confirming you are an adult and who you are | Stripe | No |
| Commercial information | Bookings, Care Bundles, Last Minute Requests, plans and prices, wallet, gifts, referrals, cancellations, and cases; an Owner’s confirmation that they chose a free-trial Caregiver who has not been background-checked | You and the members you deal with | Running bookings and payments, billing, disputes, tax and audit records | The other member of a booking; Stripe; tax authorities | No |
| Biometric information | The face match between your selfie and your ID photo | You, at Stripe | Identity verification (Section 2.2) | Stripe only — PetHour never receives it | No |
| Internet or network activity | Server logs, pages and screens used, analytics events, profile views, the IP address of each sign-in | Your device, automatically | Security, fraud prevention, improving PetHour, Caregiver Insights counts | Google Analytics (pseudonymous); our hosting provider | No |
| Geolocation | GPS during an active visit, where a visit photo was taken, your approximate city from your IP address | The Caregiver’s device; ipinfo.io | Visit route reports, photo labels, showing Caregivers near you | The booking’s Owner (the route); OpenStreetMap (coordinates rounded to about 1 km); ipinfo.io (your IP address) | No |
| Audio and visual information | Profile photos, visit photos, videos with sound, voice notes, voice messages | You and the Caregiver | Profiles, visit reports, messages | The other member of the booking or conversation; anyone, for the photos on a live Caregiver profile | No |
| Professional information | A Caregiver’s service declarations, CPR certificate, licenses and certificates and our checks of them, listing blocks, Pet Language quiz results, background-check status, the date it is valid until and our reviewer’s reasons, team membership, the history of plan, listing, free-trial, check and team changes, and an administrator’s spot-check note | You; Checkr; credential issuers and public registers | Listings and badges | Anyone, for the badges and declarations on a live profile; Checkr | No |
| Inferences | Reliability Score, Insights, approximate location | Worked out by PetHour from the data above | Scores members see, a Caregiver’s own Insights, nearby results | Other members (scores); only you (Insights) | No |
| Sensitive personal information | ID images and taxpayer numbers (held by Stripe), your password (as a hash), payment and payout accounts (held by Stripe), precise location, the contents of your messages and support requests | You; the Caregiver’s device | Only the purposes in Section 7.2 | Stripe; the member you message; Anthropic, for the text listed in Section 2.18 | No |
Some data PetHour handles is “sensitive” under state privacy laws. We process it only for the purposes below, only with your consent where the law requires it, and never sell it or use it for advertising:
We assess these activities internally before we start them and when they change, weighing their benefits against the risks to you and the safeguards described in this Policy.
PetHour does not use your personal data to train large language models or any other artificial-intelligence or machine-learning models. Our AI features send only the text described in Section 2.18 to our AI provider, Anthropic, which under our agreement does not use it to train its models either, and speech in voice notes and voice messages is transcribed on our own servers (Section 2.6). If this ever changes, we will update this Policy first and tell you in advance (Section 12).
We use essential session cookies required to operate a Blazor Server application and maintain your authenticated session. When product analytics is on (Section 2.13), our website also sets Google Analytics’ first-party cookies (_ga and _ga_<id>) to count visits and sessions; they are never set when you have opted out or your browser sends Global Privacy Control, because the analytics script is then not loaded at all. Our mobile apps use Firebase’s app-instance identifier instead of cookies. We do not use advertising cookies or tracking pixels. Firebase Cloud Messaging may use a service worker registered in your browser to handle background push notifications — this is required for push delivery and is not a tracking mechanism.
Scripts from our providers, only where they are needed. A few pages load a script from one of our providers, which may set its own cookies or store data in your browser: Stripe.js on the pages where you pay or set up payouts (for example __stripe_mid and __stripe_sid, which Stripe uses to keep payments secure and prevent fraud); Google sign-in and Sign in with Apple on our website’s sign-in and sign-up pages (our apps sign in through your device instead); Google Maps on the page where you enter your tax information; Firebase Cloud Messaging only when you turn browser notifications on or off in Preferences; and Google reCAPTCHA on the Contact form when you are not signed in (Section 4). They are not loaded on other pages, and none of them is used for advertising by PetHour. Everything else our pages need, including fonts and animations, comes from PetHour’s own servers.
Do Not Track. There is no common standard for how a website should respond to a browser’s “Do Not Track” signal, so PetHour does not change how it works when it receives one. We do honour Global Privacy Control, which switches analytics off (Section 2.13). Apart from the Google Analytics measurement described in Section 2.13 — which uses our own first-party cookies, with Google Signals and advertising features switched off — we do not allow third parties to collect information about your activity on PetHour in order to track you across other websites over time.
Cookie Policy. Our Cookie Policy (pethour.app/cookies) lists each cookie and similar technology on our website and apps, who sets it, why, and for how long. This Section governs if the two ever differ.
All data is transmitted over HTTPS/TLS. Passwords are stored as hashed values using ASP.NET Core Identity — we cannot recover your password. Payment and card data are handled exclusively by Stripe and never transit our servers in raw form. Uploaded files, including visit media, are stored on PetHour’s own servers. Files that are private — visit photos, videos, and voice notes, voice messages, CPR certificates, license and certificate documents, support attachments, and dispute evidence — are served only at long, randomly generated addresses that are shared with the people involved, and are marked so that browsers and shared caches do not keep them and search engines do not index them; anyone who has such an address can open the file, so do not share it. Data downloads (Section 7) are kept outside the public file area and can only be downloaded through a link that works once. Production data access is restricted to authorised personnel only. We review and test our security posture regularly.
Despite these measures, no internet-based service can guarantee absolute security. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials. In the event of a data breach that materially affects you, we will notify you in accordance with applicable law.
Reporting a vulnerability. If you believe you have found a security vulnerability in PetHour, please tell us as our Vulnerability Disclosure Policy (pethour.app/security) describes. It explains how to report, what we do, and the safe harbor for good-faith research.
The platform may link to or integrate with third-party services, including those listed in Section 4 (Stripe, Checkr, Anthropic, Firebase, Google Analytics, Google reCAPTCHA, Google Maps Platform, Microsoft, OpenStreetMap, ipinfo.io, Twilio, IONOS, our hosting provider, and Apple). PetHour is not responsible for the privacy practices of any third party. Address suggestions and checks on the payout page are provided by Google Maps Platform, subject to the Google Privacy Policy. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any service you use in connection with PetHour. Your use of Stripe Identity for identity verification and Checkr for background checks is subject to those providers’ own terms and privacy policies.
PetHour is not directed at children under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. To create an account you must be at least 18 and have reached the age of majority where you live, if that is higher (Terms, Section 3.3). If you believe a child under 18 has created an account, contact us at support@pethour.app and we will delete the account promptly.
We may update this policy as the platform evolves. Material changes will be communicated by email and displayed prominently in the app at least 14 days before they take effect, with a short summary of what is changing, and we will ask you to acknowledge the updated policy in the app. Until the effective date, the earlier version continues to apply and stays available on our website. If you do not agree to a material change, you can stop using the platform and delete your account at any time (Section 7). Corrections that do not affect how we handle your information, such as typographical fixes, may be made without notice.
Questions or requests regarding this Privacy Policy: support@pethour.app
By mail: ITPro Solutions LLC, 1639 Sunstone Dr, Tysons, VA 22102, United States.