Privacy policy
Last updated: 17 August 2026. MySitter is operated from South Africa and this policy is written to meet the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). It describes what the product actually does, not what it might do later.
What we collect
- Your account
- Name, email address, and a password (stored only as a hash — we never hold the password itself). Optionally a phone number. If you sign in with Google or Apple, we store the identifier they give us instead of a password.
- Your location
- Sitters give the suburb they work from and a coordinate. Families give the suburb a booking or job is for. The app can read your device location to fill this in, once, when you ask it to — nothing runs in the background and nothing is tracked over time.
- Sitter profiles
- A photo, a description, languages, years of experience, services and rates, availability, and what a sitter says about themselves — transport, whether they will stay overnight, whether they smoke, training they claim.
- Verification documents
- For sitters only: a government photo ID, a selfie, proof of address, and a police clearance certificate if they choose to upload one.
- Bookings and messages
- The bookings you make or accept, and the messages exchanged about them. Message text is stored as sent.
- Reviews
- What families and sitters write about each other after a completed booking.
Why we collect it
To let families find sitters near them, to let the two sides arrange and hold a booking, to check that a sitter is who they say they are, and to send you email about your own account and bookings. That is the whole list.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers. There is no advertising in MySitter, and no third-party analytics or tracking of any kind.
How we protect it
- A sitter’s address is never published
- Profiles show a suburb and a point up to 500 metres from where the sitter actually is. Their real coordinates stay in our database and are never sent to a browser or an app.
- Verification documents are seen only by our review team
- They are stored outside the web root with restricted permissions, are never public, and every single time one is opened we record who opened it, when, and from where. That log outlives both the document and the reviewer’s account.
- Contact details are masked until a booking is confirmed
- Phone numbers, email addresses and links inside messages are hidden until both sides have committed. The original text is kept so it can be un-hidden at that point, and so a moderator can see what was actually sent.
- Photos have their location data removed
- Uploaded photos are re-encoded on upload, which strips embedded GPS coordinates.
Everything travels over an encrypted connection, and passwords are stored only as hashes.
Who else sees it
A sitter’s public profile — their photo, description, suburb, services, rates and reviews — is visible to anyone, including people who are not signed in. Everything else is shared only with the person you are dealing with: a sitter and a family see each other’s name and messages once a booking exists, and contact details once it is confirmed.
Outside of that, your information reaches only the services that make the product run: our own servers, our email provider so that account and booking emails can be delivered, and Apple or Google if you choose to sign in with them — in which case they tell us who you are, and we tell them nothing about what you do here.
How long we keep it
For as long as you have an account. When you delete your account we mark it deleted immediately — you stop appearing in search and you can no longer sign in — and then permanently erase it, along with your verification documents, after a retention period set per country, which is 90 days for South Africa. The delay exists so that a booking dispute or a fraud report can still be investigated.
Records of who viewed a verification document are kept after that, deliberately, without the document itself. They are how we stay accountable for who looked at your ID.
Your rights
Under POPIA you may ask what we hold about you, correct it, or have it deleted. Most of it you can do yourself: your profile is editable at any time, and you can delete your account from the app or the website without asking anyone. For anything else, or to object to how we use your information, email us and a person will answer.
Children
MySitter is for adults arranging care. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. Families describe the care they need, but we do not ask for a child’s name, photograph or date of birth anywhere in the product.
Changes
If this policy changes we will update the date above. If a change materially affects how we handle your information, we will tell you by email rather than only changing this page.
Contact
Questions, requests, or complaints about your information: privacy@mysitter.net. You also have the right to complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa.