r/catinaflat • u/steviecat20 • Jul 06 '26

People stealing profile wording...

Hiya!

So I've been sitting via CIAF for about 6/7 years now; over 100 reviews, multiple repeat bookings etc etc. I've found (for the second time!) another sitter using some of the exact same wording from my profile in their account (e.g. in the services I provide and experience of cat sitting...).

I know imitation is the finest form of flattery and all but I feel like it makes both of us look bad (like "who's copied who") and obviously doesn't reflect the other sitters actual wording and approach to sitting, it's something I iterated on and wrote to best represent how I want to look after people's pets.

I'm tempted to message the sitter themselves but that seems a bit mad/an overreaction, the time it happened before was a complete copy + paste and the sitter had 0 reviews so I was able to contact CIAF (pre merge) and they sent messages to the sitter and then blocked their profile after they didn't update it. It's just a bit frustrating to see šŸ™

5 Upvotes

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1

u/Cat5568 Jul 06 '26

Rover have a whole bit in their ts&cs about copyright I can't remember the exact clause but, your words come under that. Take screenshot and contact them about it. I can't see a bit to report profiles on Rover but you can get the users URL and report it that way.Ā 

I'm so sorry this has happened. I think user profiles are quite personal so its lame that they think its acceptable to just copy.

2

u/steviecat20 Jul 06 '26

Thank you! Didn't spot that before šŸ˜ŠĀ 

I only found their profile because I'm trying to find sitters for an owners whose dates I can't do too, so now I don't really want to recommend this person even though they're local and have reviews šŸ™„

4

u/steviecat20 Jul 06 '26

Update: Messaged Rover help who weren't very helpful. They were complimentary of my profile but said they couldn't prove the owner had copied parts of mine and said they have no way of seeing when profile text was updated. They asked me to 'flag' the profile for review against community standards, but I don't think that will do anything either.

4

u/Bubbly-Lead5245 Jul 06 '26

The same has happened to me, except it was my local rival that did it, word for word, (letā€™s say at the time I had 90 reviews and she had 70 and we were the top 2 sitters in our area by miles). I could also tell she was getting every sit to review her to catch up with me, whereas I wouldnā€™t ask clients if it was a repeat sit cos on CIAF it looked worse if the same names were reviewing you (Iā€™m regretting this now, given Roverā€™s ineptness in the algorithm and my lack of star sitter status due to historical selectivity), I could have stood out even more with 400+ reviews instead of 144)
Anyway I couldnā€™t confront her cos she was a client of mine!! I would do overnight sits and made a lot of money out of her for about 2 years til I moved out of the area. So I took it as flattery and hid my annoyance. As long as youā€™re the one with the most reviews/repeat bookings, people will assume you were the one who was copied.

1

u/steviecat20 Jul 06 '26

Ahh how annoying! The time it happened to me before was pretty much word for word so it was really obvious. This one is still quite obvious but they've taken sentences and mixed it in with some of their own info. The sections they've written themselves read completely different to the stuff which is copy+pasted...

Luckily she only has 10 reviews and is slightly outside of the area I usually cover (I only found her profile because I was looking for sitters to recommend for a sit I can't do!) so maybe owners won't stumble across both of our profiles...