RescueGroups.org is very concerned with your privacy and protecting your information and data.
We recently learned that animals with a status of Hold and Pending are accessible to the public on the Petfinder website. It is our understanding that organizations intend to keep their Hold and Pending animals secure and private, and not accessible to the public.
Although the Hold and Pending pet lists are not publicly advertised on the Petfinder website, they are easily accessible by changing the pet list URL to point to the Pending or Hold status.
RescueGroups.org was uploading animals from our database to Petfinder with Hold and Pending statuses (i.e., a pet with a status of Hold on RescueGroups.org would be listed as Hold on Petfinder also), assuming they remained completely confidential.
Since this is not the case, we have removed animals with a status of Hold or Pending from our exports. We expect to see those pets be deleted from the Petfinder website over the next day or so. If you are using the Sync App, the pets should be removed from your "admin" pet list the next time the Sync App runs for your account.
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact support if you have any questions or concerns.
RescueGroups.org