I traveled Ireland far and wide, often staying in Airbnb’s. Many of them are regular BnB’s who also have a listing there. One of the private ones was even working at Airbnb (EU headquarters are there, tax haven, you know…), as a chef as far as I remember. The Irish are bloody well the friendliest hosts I had on my travels, and I have visited quite some countries so far (mostly for studies and work, often extending my stay to learn something about the country, or rather it’s flora and fauna).
Now, that one incident?
Not going to put me off Airbnb, for sure. Of course not giving the Irish hosts a bad name. But sure as hell creepy.
@GulliverFoyle, Using WiFi analyser anyways, because I like to check out WiFi reliability and signal strength. Don’t see how this really helps detecting a hidden webcam like in that case.
The magnetic field detection stuff is… odd. I might check that out, but seriously, if someone uses this in a very normal household, they are going to get many false positives, I fear.
For the case described, I think that fing would be a good start.
Go through the detected sources and copy/past any unsecured ones into a browser as the guest in the article did. Could get tedious in a house with a lot of devices or an apartment building. That Fing tool looks like it might be more comprehensive. I’ll check it out. Thanks!
Before moving invoking the/a/plurality/quorum court or hotel booking, surely the bar is lower for making a maquette around the camera, parodying the room and showing drywall (plaster? stone?) looting, mutual fraughtness, illicit gallivanting, Isle Disesmeraldizing etc. on a zoetrope. Is there a local zoetrope bar? First call. Maybe just the local Revoltech or Dunnie vendor (knockoff vendor) and a 2" mild concave lens or water blister to shorten focus.
Invisible bandage >> duct tape? Let them see whether the place is occupied, if not by what?
Make an IR Floodlight…
Never travel without one, once you’re in the gobo case habit, but you have to start with a pretty big hobby bag. To be fair it could be an invisible infrared bag.
Thinking about the time and effort involved in detecting a problem like this leads me to wonder - what’s the worst case scenario if the devices aren’t found? After finding a place in a good location at a reasonable price, checking reviews, trying to avoid vermin, insect, or CO problems, as well as securing my room and belongings against break-ins or theft, I’m tired.
Maybe I need a mask to wear in the shower, in case the footage winds up online, or a way to register under a pseudonym.
The one time we had to abandon an Airbnb property was when there was a furnace just behind some wallboard which was thunking on and off all night. The host was gracious about it, but on airbnb’s side the stay was showing as cancelled – despite our having stayed for and paid for that first night. So we couldn’t leave a review about the issue. Later guests would really have wanted to know not to use the sofabed. At least not during heating season.
We couldn’t get this resolved. And indeed it’s not in airbnb’s interest to get this resolved. They want to live in a world where the women are strong, all the children above average, and all the guest reviews 5-star.
Well, pointing to the PREVIOUSLY (at 4Mation’s IndieGoGo) where for 114 Euro As Seen On BoingBoing, your Zoetrope can be rendered in walnut and…whatever is more easily available, with 3d printers and whatnot, is kind of admitting it’s not a 3-blink 1-sheet spell to cast. In theory waste amber pill bottles can be inflated into a happi lamp with a USB-powered heat gun, but in practice, not so much.
I’ve never used AirBnB but we have used VRBO to rent a couple of vacation homes and once you get past the weird feeling about taking over someone else’ house and things it’s generally a great service - somebody has a place to rent; you need a place - bingo!
However, the condo I live in the HOA is very serious about keeping absentee owners from turning their places into a hotel. Mostly due to security concerns and also for property values (isn’t everything about property value to an HOA?). The by-laws now prevent all lease agreements for less than 1 year and homeowners can get fined up to $500 per day. Still, some owners are still listing on AirBnB despite this. It’s a bit of a battle and I can definitely see both sides. I can also almost see the rational for an owner to install a webcam to keep an eye on their stuff. Not disclosing it is creepy though.
I’m sure you’re right. But the question is, which ones? If airBnB is unwilling to help customers sift out the creepy voyeuristic hosts from the privacy respecting ones, guests are left trying their chances each time.
I’d be more worried about fire code and bedbugs, myself. But if the company is as lax with these issues as they are with spying, it’s not the kind of risk Im interested in assuming.
To me this is a failure of Airbnb, but not because they failed to intervene. They failed the minute they tried to introduce guarantees in an effort to mainstrem their business model. Airbnbing your living space or sleeping in an Airbnb should only be for the brave, the desparate and the weird who are either willing to sleep in a stranger’s house or have a stranger sleep in their house with no gaurantees as there are no guarantees on either end. If there were it would no longer be Airbnb. There are people for whom a blind-trust-based “no guarantees” works (my sister-in-lae the itinerant yoga instructor and world traveller, e.g.) but most people aren’t that. Airbnb tried to pollyfilla that trust gap, but have failed, as to actually do so through either insurance or proper screening would murder their freeloading business model.
Airbnb should be a niche thing, like couchsurfing, but as others have pointed out upthread, Airbnb’s hunger for growth, as a capitalist entity trying to run a business that feeds on a rather non-capilatist phenomenon (non-commercial “sharing”) it has tried to sell the idea as a mainstream, sanitized, friendly, safe one. This mainstreaming has created an economic pressure that makes people feel they are losing value or under-utilizing their assets (their home) if they are not squeezing a dime out of every minute of their home. In cities like NYC, where this is pre-calculated into whether one can “afford” and apartment, the phycological effect is made concrete in inflating rents and perverting landlording.
