Am I the only one who had a customer ask for a 'digital footprint audit' for their cat?

Last week, a guy in Phoenix called the shop and said his cat, Mr. Whiskers, had been acting weird since he got a new smart collar. He was dead serious, asking if we could check for 'online slander' or a 'data breach' in the pet's profile. We spent twenty minutes explaining that the collar just tracks location and feeding times, not social media. Has anyone else gotten a request this wild about pet tech?

4 comments

4 Comments

drew_hart42mo ago

My friend works at a vet clinic in Austin and they had to add a disclaimer about data privacy to their pet microchip forms. People were genuinely worried about hackers getting their dog's medical history and using it for identity theft. It's a real concern for some pet owners now.

aaron_mitchell2mo agoMost Upvoted

lol that's wild. People are getting paranoid about everything now. Next they'll worry about their toaster spying on them.

corap211mo ago

Wait, Drew Hart4, are you serious? Identity theft from a dog's medical records? That's a new level of crazy I wasn't prepared for.

lucash532mo ago

Honestly I would have laughed at this a year ago, but after seeing how much data my own pet's feeder collects, I get it now. It's not about the cat having social media, it's about all the info being out there in some company's cloud. Aaron_mitchell isn't wrong about the paranoia, but the worry comes from a real place. These devices create a profile of your pet's habits and location, and that's valuable data. People are just starting to ask who owns it and how it's kept safe.