Do You Have to Tell a House Sitter or Pet Sitter About Your Security Cameras in 2026?

Yes — in practice, you should always tell a house sitter or pet sitter about any camera in your home, and in roughly a dozen states the law effectively requires it if the camera also records audio. Pure video-only cameras are legal to run without telling anyone in most states, but every major house-sitting platform requires disclosure anyway, and recording someone's conversations without their knowledge can be a crime where you live.

Is It Legal to Have Security Cameras Running While a Sitter Stays in Your Home?

The answer splits along a line most people don't expect: video versus audio. Recording silent video of your own property is legal nationwide, including while a sitter is present, as long as you're not pointing a camera into a space — a guest bathroom, a bedroom the sitter is sleeping in — where someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Audio is a different story. Video is nearly unregulated nationwide; audio is where state consent law begins. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press tracks state wiretapping statutes and finds that roughly 11 states require all-party consent before a conversation can be recorded — California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington — with four more (Connecticut, Missouri, Nevada, and Oregon) applying different rules to in-person versus phone conversations.

Eleven states require everyone in the room to consent before you can record their voice. If you live in one of them and your camera captures audio, your sitter is a party to that recording — which means the all-party rule applies to them just like it would to a houseguest or contractor. For the full state-by-state breakdown of what counts as consent and how it's usually given, see our state guide to recording audio on a home security camera.

What Do House-Sitting and Pet-Sitting Platforms Actually Require?

Even where the law is silent, the sitting industry has already settled this. TrustedHousesitters' official Camera & Recording Devices Policy requires homeowners to disclose every internal and external camera in their listing and welcome guide before a sit begins, and to disable any interior camera for the full duration of the stay — exterior cameras covering entryways, driveways, and gardens are permitted, but only if they're disclosed up front. That's a private company's terms of service, not a law, but it reflects where the industry has landed: disclosure isn't optional, and interior monitoring of a sitter's living space isn't welcome.

That policy exists because the alternative creates real conflict. Homeowner forums are full of sitters asking whether they're required to accept a stay once they discover an undisclosed camera — and under most platform rules, they can walk away or cancel without penalty if a camera wasn't listed.

Why This Matters More Going Into the 2026 Holidays

This isn't a niche question. AAA projected that 81.8 million Americans would travel at least 50 miles from home over Thanksgiving in 2025 — a record, according to AAA's November 2025 forecast — and travel volumes like that typically climb again each year. A growing share of those travelers are leaving a sitter behind rather than an empty house. Pet Sitters International's 2026 State of the Industry Survey, which contacted nearly 4,000 member businesses between January and March 2026, found average U.S. member gross revenue reached $112,423 in 2025 — up 12% from $100,537 in 2023 — and 68% of members expect revenue to grow again in 2026. More sitters, more bookings, more holiday hand-offs of house keys — and more homes where a camera disclosure conversation needs to happen before anyone packs a bag.

Where Should You Put a Camera When Someone Else Is Staying in Your Home?

A few habits keep you on the right side of both the law and basic courtesy:

• Disclose cameras before arrival
• Skip bedrooms and bathrooms
• No audio without consent
• Aim lenses at entries only

Those four habits cover almost every complaint sitters raise in online forums about homeowners' cameras — and they're easy to follow if you set your cameras up with disclosure in mind from the start, rather than trying to explain an existing setup after the fact.

How a Spare Phone Makes Disclosure Simple

If you're already using an old phone as your home security camera, this is one of the easier problems to solve. iCameraPlus turns a phone you already own into a camera that records continuously to a private cloud archive only you can browse from the web, with remote start and stop and a dimmed screen so it isn't glaring at anyone in the room. Because you control it remotely, you can walk through the home before your sitter arrives, show them exactly which phones are recording and where, and pause or stop the ones covering any space they'll be sleeping or showering in — then hand over a home with nothing left to disclose, because there's nothing hidden to begin with. The same setup works for watching pets while a sitter is on duty without putting a lens anywhere it doesn't belong.

Quick Answers

Can a sitter cancel if they find an undisclosed camera? Under most sitting-platform terms, yes — an undisclosed camera is typically treated as a policy violation the sitter can report or walk away from, separate from whatever your state's recording law says.

Does a doorbell camera need the same disclosure as an indoor camera? Doorbell and other exterior cameras pointed at public-facing areas like a porch or driveway are generally treated more leniently than interior cameras, but platforms like TrustedHousesitters still require you to list them.

Is this the same rule as for a nanny cam? The legal baseline — video is broadly fine, audio triggers consent rules in all-party-consent states — is the same, but nanny cam situations often involve additional state labor-law disclosure requirements for household employees that don't apply to a short-term pet or house sitter. Check your state's current law before you rely on either as legal advice.

Sources

• Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press — Introduction to the Reporter's Recording Guide
• TrustedHousesitters — Camera & Recording Devices Policy
• Pet Sitters International — Press Room / 2026 State of the Industry Survey
• AAA Newsroom — Thanksgiving 2025 Travel Forecast (November 2025)
• iCameraPlus Blog — Is It Legal to Record Audio on Your Home Security Camera? 2026 State Guide