Want to Be a PETA Undercover Investigator? Here’s What You Should Know

Posted by Calvin on January 31, 2024

Think about your future career. 🤔 Is it exciting? Important? Filled with opportunities to save animals? Although PETA hires people with all sorts of backgrounds and skills—like writing, social media, law, biology, teaching, and veterinary medicine—one thing we get asked all the time is how to become an undercover investigator. 🕵️‍♀️

Investigators play a key role in ending speciesism—the mistaken belief that one species is more important than another. They change the world by showing others what really happens to animals used for experiments, food, clothing, entertainment, and other purposes. 😲 Industries that exploit animals want to hide their cruelty from the public so that they can keep raking in the dough—and undercover investigators expose the truth to help bring these industries down. 👏

If this sounds like the job for you, it’s time to start planning. 😁 Most employers search for applicants on social media or discussion boards before hiring them, so you’ll want to protect your online identity. For example, an undercover investigator who is assigned to work in a slaughterhouse might have a hard time getting a job in one if they’re linked to animal rights content, groups, or advocates. 😫 Even if you were to delete your current accounts, the info you’ve posted is never really gone. 😶

So how can you protect your online identity? Start by taking some of these simple steps:

• Use pseudonyms (aka “screen names”) online.
• Make your social media profiles private and your content visible to friends only. 👥
• Limit your old posts to stop people who aren’t your friends from seeing them.
• Turn off discoverability, which will stop anyone with your e-mail address or phone number from finding your accounts.
• Turn off tagging in photos so that others can’t find your accounts. 🤫
• If you sign online petitions or make donations, click the option to stay anonymous so your name isn’t listed.

Even if you don’t end up working for PETA, you can always advance animal rights in other ways. 😊 Folks who work with children can teach them to be kind to animals or help stop animal dissection in their schools, lawyers can represent activists and take on animal rights cases for free, and social media influencers can hype animal-friendly products. Consider applying for a PETA internship or the Students Opposing Speciesism (SOS) Campus Rep Program to jump-start your compassionate career. 👩‍💼

*****

Want to get a glimpse of the kind of cruelty you’d be uncovering as an investigator? Watch PETA’s new docuseries for a behind-the-scenes look at the lives of animals in laboratories. If you see only one docuseries in 2024, make sure it’s this one.