Is Rover safe to use?

Rover integrates 108 third-party SDKs spanning support, infrastructure, and analytics. Its App Store privacy label declares cross-app tracking via Purchases, Location, Contact Info, Identifiers, and Usage Data. It collects data linked to your identity including Purchases, Location, Contact Info, and User Content and 4 more categories. It includes 5 advertising or attribution SDKs. Whether this is acceptable depends on your personal privacy preferences.

What permissions does Rover need?

Rover requests 9 iOS permissions: App Tracking Transparency, Camera, Microphone, Contacts, Photo Library, Location (When In Use), Location (Always & When In Use), Motion & Fitness, and Save to Photo Library.

What data does Rover collect?

According to its App Store privacy label, Rover declares cross-app tracking via Purchases, Location, Contact Info, Identifiers, and Usage Data. It collects data linked to your identity including Purchases, Location, Contact Info, User Content, Search History, Identifiers, Usage Data, and Diagnostics.

How many SDKs does Rover have?

Rover integrates 108 third-party SDKs. 4 for advertising, 1 for attribution, 7 for analytics, 1 for crash reporting, 4 for payments, 17 for customer support, 2 for social integration, 11 for infrastructure, and 59 for other.

Does Rover use Facebook tracking?

Yes. Rover includes 6 Facebook SDKs: Facebook AEM, Facebook SDK, Facebook Gaming Services, Facebook Login, Facebook Share, and react_native_fbsdk_next. These are used for ad measurement, attribution, and integration with Facebook's advertising platform (developers.facebook.com).

Does Rover use Google SDKs?

Yes. Rover includes 10 Google or Firebase SDKs: Firebase App Check Interop, Firebase Cloud Messaging, Firebase Core, Google Data Transport, Google Sign-In, Firebase Core Internal, Firebase Installations, Google Utilities, FirebaseAppCheck, and RNGoogleSignin. These are used for cloud infrastructure and services, not advertising.

Does Rover use App Tracking Transparency?

Yes. Rover requests the App Tracking Transparency permission, which means it asks for your consent to track your activity across other companies' apps and websites.

Does Rover access your location?

Yes. Rover requests location access. The developer states: "We'll use your location to offer nearby results and provide helpful location notifications for Rover Cards.".

Does Rover access your camera or microphone?

Rover requests access to both your camera and microphone. The developer says camera access is for "Rover needs camera access so that you can capture and share photos during stays booked through the app". Microphone access is for "Rover uses the microphone when you create and send dog videos". These permissions are only active when you grant them in iOS Settings.

Does Rover access your contacts?

Yes. Rover requests access to your contacts. The developer states: "Rover needs access to your contacts to add the emergency hotline.".

Does Rover run in the background?

Yes. Rover registers 6 background modes, which means it can perform certain tasks when you're not actively using it.

What are some alternatives to Rover?

Other travel apps include Air Canada , Aeroméxico , Air France , Airalo , Airbnb , and Priority Pass+ . Each app takes a different approach to travel and varies in its data collection and SDK usage.

Travel · Privacy report

Rover—Dog Sitters & Walkers

Free · ★4.9 · Rover.com

Is Rover safe?

It leans heavily on third-party trackers.

Our take. Rover is built with more third-party tracking code than 87% of the travel we have scanned.

Privacy footprint · vs 103 travelHeavy

Trackers from other companies12 · a lot

typical travel: 5

Data the app links to you8 types · some

typical travel: 5 · from its own privacy label

What it collects about you

Rover links 8 categories of your data to you.

From the developer's own App Store privacy label. These are the kinds of data Rover ties to your identity, and it also declares it shares data to track you across other apps.

PurchasesLocationContact InfoUser ContentSearch HistoryIdentifiersUsage DataDiagnostics

Who else is inside

It carries trackers from 6 companies.

Third-party SDKs found in the app, matched to the company that publishes each. Present in the code; we do not observe what they transmit.

🇺🇸MetaAdvertising

Facebook advertising SDKs, built to link app activity to Facebook and Instagram ad profiles.

SDKs

🇺🇸GoogleAnalytics

Firebase, AdMob and Google analytics SDKs, built to record how you use the app and serve ads.

SDKs

🇺🇸AmplitudeAnalytics

Product analytics, built to record detailed behaviour inside the app.

SDKs

🇺🇸BranchAttribution

Deep linking and marketing attribution.

SDK

🏢Messaging SDKMessaging

Push notification and messaging platform.

SDK

🏢Other third partiesanalytics

A third-party SDK.

SDK

How it compares

Where it sits among travel.

Every one of these apps we have scanned, on the two measures above: third-party trackers it carries (across) and data it links to you on its own label (up). Toward the top right is more invasive.

Each dot is one travel app. Rover sits to the right, carrying more third-party tracking than most.

Other signals

One more flag.

Each is a fact read straight from the app. The same checks run on every app we scan. Only the ones that apply here are shown.

It declares cross-app tracking

Its own App Store label says it tracks you across other companies apps and websites using your advertising identifier.

The evidence

What it's built from.

All 108 SDKs in the app, grouped by what they are for. 12 are third-party trackers.

4advertising

1attribution

7analytics

1crash reporting

1push & messaging

94standard libraries

12 of the 108 are third-party trackers. One is a push-notification SDK that delivers notifications, rather than tracking you across apps. The rest are the app's own code and standard open-source building blocks.

Show the full SDK list

MetaAdvertising · USA

Facebook AEM · Facebook SDK · Facebook Gaming Services · Facebook Login

GoogleAnalytics · USA

Google Analytics Connector · Firebase Core · Google Data Transport

AmplitudeAnalytics · USA

Amplitude · Amplitude Session Replay

BranchAttribution · USA

Branch

Messaging SDKMessaging

Iterable

Other third partiesanalytics

Statsig

Push & messaging1 · notifications

Standard libraries94 · on-device

The app's own code plus open-source interface, storage and networking libraries.

How we know this

Counterspy downloads the app from the App Store and statically analyzes its compiled binary. Embedded SDKs are matched against a signature database and resolved to the company that operates each. We also read the developer's App Store privacy label, which lists the data the app says it collects and links to you. We do not run the app or intercept its traffic, so we report capabilities present in the code and the developer's own disclosures, not proven transmission. We assess privacy and data collection, not malware, security flaws, or developer intent. Reports are automated and never edited for payment. Scan v26.0318.01, 2026-04-03.

Third-party trackers are advertising, analytics and attribution SDKs detected by static signature matching. Presence shows a capability is compiled in, not that it ran or transmitted data.
"Data the app links to you" is the count of data categories the developer declares as Data Linked To You in its App Store privacy label. Labels are self-reported and not verified by Apple.
Comparison across the 103 travel in our corpus. Trackers: median 5. Data linked to you: median 5.