What we collect, and what we do with it

Who we are

BarkCheck is run by WickedSelf LLC, 2810 N Church St #578615, Wilmington, DE 19802. You can reach us at support@wickedself.com. We operate in the United States only.

What you give us

Your account

Your name and email address are held by our sign-in provider. There is no password: you sign in with a link we email you, so there is no password of yours for anyone — us or them — to hold or to lose. In our own database we keep your name, email address, phone number, profile photo, a short bio, hobbies, your city, the year you started sitting if you enter it, and your notification settings. Phone numbers are optional until you agree to a sit.

We also keep your home address if you enter one. It is never shown to anybody, on any screen. The only thing read from it is the ZIP code, and the only thing that is used for is saying roughly how far away a job or a sitter is — “about 4 miles” — worked out from the middle of one ZIP code to the middle of another. The street itself is used for nothing.

Your pets

Everything you put in a care plan: name, species, breed, color, birth month and year, photo, whether they are microchipped, feeding and medication instructions, where they sleep, what to watch out for, your vet name and phone number, and an emergency contact name and phone number. Some of this describes another person, so only enter a contact who is expecting to be called.

The care record

Every sit you create or accept: the dates, the timezone, which animals it covers, every scheduled task, and every confirmation. A confirmation holds the time it was signed, the name of the person who signed it, an optional note and an optional photo. Missed tasks are recorded as missed, along with any explanation the sitter writes. Ratings and notes owners leave about a sit. This is the part we keep longest, and the reason is below.

Messages, photos and video

Messages between an owner and a sitter, including images and video you attach. Photos of medication labels you upload so the app can read the dose off them. Anything you write to support.

A photo from a phone carries the place and time it was taken inside the file. We remove that from every photo before it is stored, so a picture of your kitchen does not say where your kitchen is. We cannot yet do the same for video, so a clip is stored as your phone made it.

Location, only during a walk

When a sitter starts a walk, their phone records the route until they stop it. That route is saved with the walk and shown to the owner of the animal. This is precise location, which some state laws treat as sensitive, so it is worth being exact about the limits. There is no background tracking. Nothing is recorded before the walk starts or after it ends, the sitter starts and stops it by hand, only the sitter phone is involved, and the pet is not tracked at all. If a pet has its own GPS collar you can note the brand in the care plan, but we do not connect to it.

Payment

Owners never pay for BarkCheck. Sitters who go past their free sits subscribe through Stripe. Stripe handles the card and we never see the number. We store the customer and subscription identifiers Stripe gives us, your plan, and the date it runs until. If you add a Venmo or Zelle handle so owners can tip you, we store the handle. We do not move money between owners and sitters and we cannot see whether a tip was sent.

A sitter can write down what they were paid for a sit, for their own records, and we store that number. It is a note they make about a payment that happened somewhere else. We are not part of that payment, we cannot tell whether it was made, nothing checks the figure against anything, and it is never shown to the owner.

What we collect automatically

Like any website, our servers log requests. That includes your IP address, the type of browser or device you are using, the pages you opened and when. We use it to keep the service running, to find faults and to spot abuse. We do not build an advertising profile from it and we do not use it to work out where you live beyond what an IP address implies to any web server.

Cookies

We set four kinds of cookie. None of them is for advertising.

• Sign-in cookies, set by our sign-in provider, so you stay logged in and so a request can be checked as yours. Blocking these means you cannot use the app.
• One side cookie, set when you have both an owner and a sitter side and pick one. It remembers which side you last used, for a year, so the app opens on the right one. It holds the word for that side and nothing else.
• One referral cookie, set only if you arrive on somebody invite link. It remembers who introduced you for 30 days and is read once, when your account is created. It holds a short code and nothing about you.
• One setup cookie, set when you start creating an account. It holds a random number for 30 days so we can count how many people finish setting up and where the rest stop. It holds no name, no email, and nothing you typed into the form. If you finish, we link it to your account so the two halves of the count add up.

There are no advertising cookies and no third-party analytics on this site. We measure our own setup flow, and nothing else, so that we can fix the parts where people get stuck. Because we do not track you across other websites, there is nothing for a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal to switch off.

What you type before you have an account

Setting up asks about you and your pet before you create an account. All of it stays on your own device until you sign up. It is not sent to us, and we cannot read it. If you leave and come back on the same device it is still there, so you do not have to start again. If you never sign up, it stays on your device until you clear it.

From other companies

If you sign in with Google, we receive your name and email address from Google. Stripe tells us whether a subscription is active. We do not buy information about you from data brokers.

What we do not collect

• Card numbers, bank details or government identification.
• Your date of birth.
• Your Social Security number.
• Biometrics, face scans or photographs of identity documents.
• Advertising or cross-site tracking data. There are no third-party analytics or advertising trackers on this site.
• Your contacts, your photo library, or anything from other apps.
• Background check results. That feature is built but switched off, and no check has ever been run.
• Health information about you. Pet health is the point of a care plan, but we do not ask you for your own, and you should not put it in a message.

Why we use it

• To run the care record: schedules, reminders, confirmations, misses.
• To tell you when something happens, by push, email or in the app.
• To work out a sitter BarkCheck Score from their own record and the ratings owners leave.
• To check messages for abuse and to keep phone numbers out of them.
• To take subscription payments from sitters.
• To answer you when you contact support.
• To find faults, prevent fraud and keep the service secure.
• To count how many people finish setting up an account, and which step the rest stop on, so we can fix it.
• To meet a legal obligation, or to defend a legal claim.
• To keep the record as evidence for both sides if there is later a disagreement about what happened.

We do not sell your information, we do not share it for advertising, and we have not done either in the past twelve months.

Decisions made by software

Two things here run automatically and it is fair to know both.

• The BarkCheck Score is worked out by software from a sitter own record and the ratings owners leave. It is shown to owners. A sitter can see exactly how their own number was reached, and below 90 they are told before an owner acts on it. A score that stays below 78 for 28 days locks the account, which stops new sits and takes the page off the directory. That is an automated decision and we say so plainly: it is made by software, from the record described above and nothing else. No account is ever deleted or closed by it, nothing is erased, and sits already under way are unaffected. We warn before it happens, more than once, and say what will happen and when. A person will look at it if you ask, and can undo it.
• Message moderation uses an AI model, described below. A held message is released or acted on by a person, not by the model.

If you think either got something wrong about you, write to us and a person will look at it.

Messages are read by a machine before they are delivered

Every message sent in the app goes through two checks. The first is mechanical and looks for phone numbers, email addresses and handles. It removes them and warns the sender, because contact details are released by the app under a rule rather than by whoever asks first. The second sends the message text and any photo to an AI model to be checked for abuse. A message the model flags in certain categories is held for a person to review, and the sender is told it is being reviewed.

Video clips are checked too, before anyone but you can see them. Eight still pictures are taken from the clip and sent, together with anything written alongside it, to the same two companies described below. Those pictures are read inside a separate, sealed-off program that holds none of our passwords or account keys, so nothing inside it can reach anything else. If a clip is held for a person to review, those pictures are stored with it, and we keep them after the review. If our checking service cannot finish within fifteen minutes, we show the clip anyway rather than leave you waiting, and keep checking it in the background; if it later fails that check, it comes down. A clip you start uploading but never send is kept in private storage. Nobody sees it in the app.

If neither company can check a message or photo, it is delivered rather than blocked, and the failure is recorded for us to fix.

Who else touches your information

We use other companies to run the product. They only handle what they need to, and they are not allowed to use it for their own purposes.

• Supabase for accounts and sign-in, including Google sign-in if you use it, and for the database that holds your records.
• Vercel for hosting and for storing photos and video.
• Anthropic and OpenAI, called directly, to read medication labels off photos you upload. If the first cannot match the label to our list of animal medicines, the same photo goes to the second. Neither is asked to remember it.
• Anthropic and OpenAI, called directly, to check messages, photos and video clips as described above. Anthropic is asked first. If it cannot give an answer, the same message or photo, or the same clip’s still pictures, go to OpenAI.
• Stripe for sitter subscriptions.
• Resend to send email.
• Apple, Google and your browser maker to deliver push notifications to your device.
• OpenStreetMap for map tiles. When a page shows a map, your browser asks their servers for the tiles it draws.

We may also disclose information where the law requires it, in response to lawful legal process, to defend a legal claim, or where it is needed to protect somebody from harm. We may share information that has been stripped of anything identifying.

If the company is sold

If WickedSelf LLC is bought, merged, or sells the part of the business that runs BarkCheck, the information described here would transfer with it. Being acquired is an openly stated goal for this product rather than a remote possibility, so it belongs here in plain words instead of a footnote. Whoever bought it would be bound by this policy for information collected under it until they told you otherwise.

What other people can see

• The sitter on a sit sees the care plan for the animals on that sit, the schedule, and your phone number once you have both agreed. That access ends three days after the sit finishes.
• An owner never gets a sitter phone number. Owners reach sitters through the message thread. The sitter is the person alone in a stranger house, and a phone number is what turns a disagreement into being found.
• Owners see a sitter BarkCheck Score and the counts behind it. A sitter sees the same number the owner sees, and can see exactly how it was worked out.
• Your scores are private; your review is not. The three scores you give a finished sit are never shown to the sitter. They reach that sitter only inside their BarkCheck Score, as an average across every rating they have. The review you write is different: that sitter reads it, with your name, and it appears on their public page only if you said it could.
• Photos and video you upload are stored privately. Links to them are signed and expire, so a copied link stops working.
• Owners have no public page. If you only use BarkCheck to arrange care for your own animals, nothing about you is visible to anybody who is not on a sit with you.
• Sitters have a public page, and it is public by default. If you sit for other people you get a page at an address of your own, like https://barkcheck.com/sitters/jane-d-k7m2. It shows your first name and the initial of your last name, your town, the care record you have built, whatever you have written for the page, and any photos you have added to it. If you publish a calendar, it also shows the next two weeks as a calendar, in your own timezone: the days and times you have said you are free, and which of the days you normally work are already taken. It does not say what took one, so an agreed sit and an afternoon you blocked out for yourself look the same to a reader. It never shows your surname, your street address, your phone number or your email address. Once it has real content on it, it can be found through Google.
• We show you the page when you sign up, and ask you then. Saying yes here does not publish anything on its own. No page goes live until it carries the basics: a photo of you, your town, at least one service, a few sentences about yourself, how far you travel, and — if you sit dogs — which sizes you take. Some of it cannot exist before you have an account — a photo has nowhere to upload to, and there are no services or dog sizes to pick yet — so the switch that puts your page up sits on your page editor, under Your business, beside a list of whatever is still missing. You can turn it off again at any time. Switched off, the page stops existing for everybody but you.
• If you joined before the page existed, you have never been asked, and nothing of yours is published. Your page is not public and will not appear in Google until you are shown it and say yes. “Public by default” describes the choice we put in front of new sitters, not a switch we flipped for people who never saw it.
• An owner who is signed in also sees roughly how far away you are — “about 4 miles” — worked out from the middle of your ZIP code to the middle of theirs. Neither exact address is used, and neither is ever shown.

How long we keep it

A finished sit and everything attached to it is kept for 7 years after the sit ends, then deleted. We keep it that long because a care record is evidence for two people. If an animal was hurt, or somebody says a dose was never given, that record is what answers it, and the argument usually happens long after the sit did.

A sit that is subject to a legal dispute is kept until the dispute is over, whichever comes later. Backups and logs age out on their own schedule, which is shorter.

Where it is kept

Your information is stored and processed in the United States. We do not offer the service anywhere else and we do not transfer your information abroad, other than any incidental handling by the companies listed above under their own terms.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time from your profile. Your name, email address, phone number and profile are erased. Your profile photo, home and page photos and library come off BarkCheck, and we keep the files in private storage. The care records you were part of stay, without your name on them, for the period above. See how to delete your account for the full detail and for what to do if you cannot sign in.

Your rights and choices

Depending on which state you live in, you may have a legal right to ask us to do the things below. We offer all of them to everybody rather than checking your address first.

• Know and access. Ask what we hold about you and get a copy, including in a portable format.
• Correct. Fix anything wrong. Most of it you can edit yourself in your profile and your care plans.
• Delete. Delete your account, as described above. Some things must be kept, and the care record is the main one. We will tell you what was kept and why.
• Opt out of sale, sharing or targeted advertising. We do none of these, so there is nothing to opt out of.
• Limit the use of sensitive information. The only sensitive category we collect is precise location during a walk, and it is used only to draw that walk.
• Not be treated differently for asking. Nothing about your account changes because you exercised a right.

Write to support@wickedself.com from the email address on your account and say what you want. We will check it is you before we act, which usually means replying from that address. Somebody you authorize in writing can ask on your behalf, and we will still check with you. We aim to answer within 45 days.

If we say no, we will tell you why, and you can appeal by replying to that message with the word appeal. A different person reviews an appeal, and we will answer it within 45 days. If you are still unhappy you can complain to your state attorney general.

California residents: we do not disclose personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing, so there is nothing to report under the Shine the Light law.

Notifications and email

You can turn off any type of notification, by type and by channel, in your settings. We do not send marketing text messages and we do not make automated calls. Some messages are about your account or a sit in progress, and those keep coming while you have an active sit, because they are the product working.

Security

Photos and video are stored privately and served through links that expire. Sitter links are signed, can be revoked, and only work for the account that claimed them. Contact details are released by one rule in one place rather than by each screen deciding for itself. No system is perfectly secure, and we will tell you if something happens that affects you.

Children

BarkCheck is for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has created an account, write to us and we will remove it.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page, and we will tell you in the app if the change is significant.

Contact

WickedSelf LLC, 2810 N Church St #578615, Wilmington, DE 19802. support@wickedself.com. See also our terms.