MyPetSitter

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 13 October 2026

Who We Are

MyPetSitter is a cloud-based pet care business management platform operated by MyPetSitter Ltd. We provide software tools for dog walkers, boarders, groomers and pet sitters to manage their clients, bookings and daily operations.

Data Controller: MyPetSitter Ltd
Email: hello@mypetsitter.co.uk
ICO Registration: ZC191166

Who is responsible for what. MyPetSitter Ltd is the data controller of your platform account — the information you give us to hold your own account, your account settings and the choices you make in it. When a pet-care business uses MyPetSitter to run its services, that business is the data controller of its own business records about you (for example your bookings, care logs, notes and invoices), and we process those records on the business’s behalf and only on its instructions. If your question is about a business’s records, you can contact that business directly; we will help it answer you.

Your Platform Account

When you create a MyPetSitter business account, your account is created on the MyPetSitter platform. Your business operates as a service provider on the platform, and the clients and staff who register through your portal also hold platform accounts.

If a client's relationship with your business ends, their platform account remains active. They retain read-only access to their historical data (past bookings, invoices and care logs) and may connect with other businesses on the platform. We process their continued account data under our legitimate interest in maintaining the platform.

Because your account is held by MyPetSitter, we may show you, inside the platform, optional MyPetSitter features that are open to you — for example the directory, the community, a marketplace, or an invitation to take part in research. These are optional. Taking part in research, and receiving marketing from us by email or text, happen only if you opt in, and you can change your mind at any time. We do not use a business’s records about you for this. If you would rather not see one of these features, tell us and we will switch it off for you.

What Data We Collect

We collect the following categories of personal data:

Account Information

Your name and email address
Profile photo (if provided)
Phone number and home address
Business name, logo and branding preferences
Billing address and payment details

Pet Information

Pet name, breed, age, weight and gender
Vaccination records and veterinary details
Medical conditions and medication requirements
Behavioural notes and dietary requirements
Microchip number

Booking & Service Data

Bookings for dog walking, boarding, daycare, pet-sitting home visits, meet & greets, and any other pet-care service the business offers
Daily care logs, walk records, welfare checks and training assessments
Photos and videos taken during care sessions (Pupdates™)
Payment and invoicing information
Subscription plan and usage analytics
Custom form submissions and digital agreements

Technical Data

Authentication tokens (to keep you signed in)
Browser type and device information (through Firebase Authentication)
Usage patterns and feature engagement — our own records (see Data Retention), and Google Analytics only if you choose Accept All in the cookie banner

Conversations with Gaia

What you ask Gaia, our AI assistant, and what she answers

Tax & HMRC Data (only if you opt in to Making Tax Digital)

Business entity type (Sole Trader or Ltd Company)
VAT registration number (if VAT-registered)
National Insurance Number (Sole Traders only, for Income Tax Self Assessment)
HMRC OAuth access + refresh tokens (encrypted, per-business, revocable)
HMRC-mandated fraud-prevention signals (IP, device fingerprint, screen size, timezone, browser user-agent) — captured only when you initiate a submission and sent only to HMRC
HMRC submission receipts (form-bundle numbers, submission IDs, processing dates)

How We Use Your Data

We use your personal data to:

Provide and maintain the MyPetSitter platform and its features
Manage your account, subscription and billing
Enable you to manage your clients, pets and bookings
Facilitate daily care updates (Pupdates™) between businesses and their clients
Process invoices and payments
Send you platform notifications and service updates
Provide customer support via email, Telegram and Discord
Improve the platform based on aggregated usage patterns
Show account holders, inside the platform, optional MyPetSitter features that are open to them (such as the directory, the community, a marketplace or research participation)
Invite account holders to take part in research, and include them only if they opt in
Comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

Conversations with Gaia, our AI assistant: we keep what was asked and what she answered. Before any of it is used, we remove names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses and postcodes, the names of pets and businesses, and card and bank details, and a conversation that contains payment details is never used at all. What is left is used to improve Gaia’s answers and the way she speaks, to understand what people commonly ask and expect, and to train our own Gaia model. Our lawful basis is legitimate interests. You can object at any time by emailing hello@mypetsitter.co.uk, and we will stop using your conversations for this.

Lawful Basis for Processing

We process your personal data on the following legal grounds under the UK GDPR:

Contract: Processing is necessary to provide the MyPetSitter platform and services you have subscribed to.
Legitimate Interest: To manage our business, improve our platform, improve Gaia and train our own Gaia model from her conversations once personal details are removed, maintain the security and reliability of the platform, and show account holders, inside the platform, optional features that are open to them. You can object to this at any time.
Legal Obligation: To comply with applicable laws including tax, health & safety regulations.
Consent: Where we send you marketing communications by email or text, send optional notifications, or include you in research — you can withdraw this consent at any time.

Future Uses of Your Data

The platform will grow. So that nothing we do later comes as a surprise, these are the ways we may use platform account data in future, and the conditions that always apply:

Recommendations and personalisation. We may use your account data, and how you use our features, to personalise what you see, recommend services, businesses or content, and rank or match results (for example in a directory or a marketplace). We will not make a decision about you that has legal or similarly significant effects based solely on automated processing. You can object at any time.
Sharing through a feature you use. When you use a feature that connects you with someone else — for example asking a business for a quote through a marketplace — we share what that feature needs, and we tell you at that point.
Anonymised and aggregated data. We may combine data into anonymised, aggregated statistics from which no person can be identified. That is no longer personal data, and we may use, publish, license or sell it.
Selling or licensing personal data. We will only sell or license your personal data to another organisation with your explicit consent, asked for separately and for that purpose alone. You can withdraw it at any time, and saying no changes nothing else about your account.
If our company changes hands. If MyPetSitter Ltd, or the part of its business that runs the platform, is merged with, sold to or transferred to another organisation, your account data may be transferred to it. The new owner must go on protecting it as this policy describes, and we will tell you.
Anything else. If we want to use your data for a purpose not described in this policy, we will update this policy before we start and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent first.

None of this applies to the records a business keeps about you; those are the business’s, and we use them only on its instructions (see Who We Are).

Data Storage & Security

Your data is stored securely using Google Firebase (Firestore database and Firebase Authentication), hosted on Google Cloud infrastructure within the EU region. Google maintains robust security certifications and complies with international data protection standards.

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your data, including:

Encryption of data in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and at rest
Firestore Security Rules restricting data access to authorised users only
Token-based authentication ensuring only you can access your account
Regular review of access permissions
Multi-tenant data isolation ensuring your business data is separate from other businesses
Regular security audits and vulnerability assessments

International Transfers: Google Firebase may process data in data centres located outside the UK. Google operates under Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK International Data Transfer Agreement to ensure adequate data protection.

We do not sell your personal data without your explicit consent (see Future Uses of Your Data). We may share your data with:

Google Firebase / Google Cloud: As our data processor for hosting, authentication and database services.
Payment processors: To process subscription payments securely (e.g. Stripe).
AI providers (OpenAI; Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service): When you talk to Gaia, what you ask and the records she needs to answer are sent to our AI provider so that she can reply. Under its terms for our account, what we send is not used to train its models.
Google Analytics: Only if you choose Accept All in the cookie banner — which screens are used, with advertising features switched off.
HMRC (UK tax authority): When you connect Making Tax Digital, we send your Income Tax update totals (turnover + expense categories) to HMRC on your instruction. VAT returns are not sent: VAT returns under Making Tax Digital are not offered. We send only the numeric fields HMRC requires plus mandatory fraud-prevention headers (your IP, device fingerprint, screen size, timezone, browser user-agent). We never send your customer names, invoice line-items, or client PII to HMRC. See the HMRC & Making Tax Digital section below for full detail.
Your clients: Data you enter about clients and pets is accessible to the clients you invite to your platform portal.
Legal authorities: If required by law or to protect the rights and safety of our users.

HMRC & Making Tax Digital

MyPetSitter offers an optional Accountant / Making Tax Digital (MTD) module that sends your Income Tax quarterly updates directly to HMRC (His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) on your instruction. It does not send VAT returns. This section covers the additional data we collect and share when you choose to use it. The MTD module is opt-in — nothing described here happens unless you explicitly connect to HMRC.

Tax data we collect from you:

Business type (Sole Trader or Ltd Company) — determines which HMRC filing pathways are available to you.
VAT registration number — if you are VAT-registered, so that your books record VAT correctly. It is not sent to HMRC: VAT returns are not sent from MyPetSitter.
National Insurance Number (NINO) — required for Sole Traders wishing to file Income Tax Self Assessment (ITSA) period summaries. Ltd Companies do not provide a NINO here.
HMRC OAuth access + refresh tokens — issued by HMRC when you authorise us to file on your behalf. Stored encrypted in your isolated per-business record and revocable at any time from the Tax Profile screen.

Fraud-prevention data we collect (HMRC-mandated):

HMRC requires every software vendor filing to their APIs to send a specific set of “Gov-Client-*” headers on every call. These headers help HMRC detect fraudulent or automated submissions. We collect the following only in order to send them to HMRC on your behalf when you initiate a filing:

Your public IP address at the time of the submission (with timestamp).
A stable device identifier (derived from your browser + a random ID kept in local storage — not tied to your device hardware).
Your browser user-agent string.
Your screen resolution, window size, colour depth and pixel ratio.
Your timezone offset (e.g. UTC+00:00).
Any multi-factor authentication status HMRC needs to record.

These signals are collected exclusively for HMRC’s fraud-detection headers. They are not used for advertising, analytics, profiling, or any other purpose. They are sent to HMRC as part of the submission call and stored in an audit log against your business (which submission, which time, which headers were sent) so we can prove to HMRC that we complied with their fraud-prevention rules.

What we send TO HMRC:

Income Tax period summaries (sole traders only): Only period dates, period income totals (turnover + other income) and period expense totals broken down by HMRC’s expense categories (cost of goods, wages, travel, professional fees, etc.).
The Gov-Client-* fraud-prevention headers described above.

What we do NOT send to HMRC:

Individual customer / client names or contact details.
Invoice line items, booking details, or any transactional narrative.
Pet names or care logs.
Any data other than the aggregated figures and mandatory fraud headers listed above.

Every HMRC submission receipt (form-bundle number, submission ID, processing date) is stored in your business record as an immutable audit trail. You can view the full list at Accountant → Income Tax Returns.

Disconnecting from HMRC: You can revoke our HMRC access at any time from Accountant → Tax Profile → Disconnect. This deletes the stored OAuth tokens. HMRC records of prior submissions remain (they are legally required by tax law).

Data Retention

We retain your personal data for as long as you have an active account with us and for a reasonable period afterwards to fulfil legal, accounting and reporting obligations.

Account data: Retained while your subscription is active. Deleted within 90 days of account closure upon request.
Business data (clients, pets, bookings): Retained while your subscription is active. Exportable at any time upon request.
Billing records & invoices: Retained for 7 years for tax and legal purposes.
HMRC / MTD submission receipts (Income Tax update receipts, form-bundle numbers, submission IDs, processing dates): Retained for 6 years as required by HMRC record-keeping law, regardless of account closure. Account deletion removes personal identifiers but preserves the anonymised submission audit trail as required by tax law.
Fraud-prevention header logs (the Gov-Client-* signals we sent to HMRC): Retained for 6 years alongside the corresponding submission receipt so we can prove compliance with HMRC’s fraud-prevention rules on request.
Aggregated, anonymous page-view counts: Retained indefinitely for product improvement. These carry no user identifier.
Product usage records (which screens you opened, when a session started and ended, and how far you got through setup — recorded against your user account so we can find where people get stuck): Retained for 180 days and then deleted automatically. These records do not include what you type; conversations with Gaia are described under How We Use Your Data.

Your Rights

Under the UK GDPR, you have the following rights:

Right of Access: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
Right to Rectification: Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete data.
Right to Erasure: Request deletion of your data (subject to legal retention requirements).
Right to Restrict Processing: Request that we limit how we use your data.
Right to Data Portability: Request your data in a machine-readable format.
Right to Object: Object to processing based on legitimate interest.
Right to Withdraw Consent: Where processing is based on consent, you can withdraw at any time.
Right to Disconnect from HMRC: If you use Making Tax Digital, you can revoke our HMRC access at any time from Accountant → Tax Profile → Disconnect. This deletes the stored OAuth tokens immediately. Existing HMRC submission records remain as required by tax law.

To exercise any of these rights, please email us at hello@mypetsitter.co.uk. We will respond to your request within one month.

Cookies & Local Storage

This website uses strictly necessary cookies and browser local storage to function properly. If — and only if — you choose Accept All in the cookie banner, we also use Google Analytics to see which screens get used; until then the Google Analytics script is not loaded. We do not use advertising cookies, and we share nothing with advertising networks. We do keep our own product usage records inside your account — see Data Retention above — which is a separate thing from a tracking cookie: it never follows you to another website.

Firebase Authentication: Sets secure, HTTP-only cookies/tokens to keep you signed in.
Local Storage: Used to store your preferences, UI state (e.g. onboarding progress, dashboard settings), and cookie consent choice.
Session Storage: Used for temporary caching of images during your browsing session.

Which website sent a visit, counted without cookies. On our public pages (mypetsitter.co.uk and mypetbooks.co.uk) we count which website sent a visit — for example gov.uk or a search engine — without cookies and without storing anything on your device. When you arrive, your browser tells us the address of the site you came from (only its name, such as www.gov.uk — never the page you were on), the public page you landed on, and any campaign tag in the link. To count a browser once per day, your IP address and browser type are mixed with a random key that changes every day into a one-way code; the key and the codes are deleted after two days, and we do not store your IP address. What remains is a daily total that cannot be linked to you. If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, nothing is sent at all. Our legitimate interest is knowing where interest in our software comes from.

For full details, please see our Cookie Policy.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated "Last updated" date. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.

Contact & Complaints

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or wish to exercise your rights, please contact us:

Email: hello@mypetsitter.co.uk

If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO):

ICO Website: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
ICO Helpline: 0303 123 1113
Our ICO Registration Number: ZC191166

For any questions, please contact us at hello@mypetsitter.co.uk