Airbnb has a hidden camera problem | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb has a hidden camera problem

theatlantic.com

63 pointsAnalemma_21 comments

Airbnb allows cameras in living rooms as long as they're disclosed? I sure hope that disclosure is extremely prominent to make sure I never book one. I can't believe they allow that.

Starting in early 2018, Airbnb added another layer of disclosure: If hosts indicate they have cameras anywhere on their property, guests receive a pop-up informing them where the cameras are located and where they are aimed. To book the property, the guests must click “agree,” indicating that they’re aware of the cameras and consent to being filmed.

This is in the top 3 requests I get from hosts while making floor plans of their properties as a service: https://www.archibnb.com. So far all the cameras were outdoors, aimed at the entrance door. In any case, hosts want to be sure guests understand exactly where the cameras are.

Camera detectors are cheap (I purchased a combo camera detector (IR strobe type) and RF Detector (0 to 6GHZ, overly sensitive but works nicely if you retract the antenna and dial down the sensitivity) for the equivalent of $15.70 USD + shipping through amazon) and easily available these days - anyone renting an AirBNB or hotel room should get one and check the room before settling in.

Neat! Link to the one you bought? Are you happy with it?

I believe it was this one: https://www.amazon.com.au/Anti-Spy-Wireless-Detector-Listeni... (note the price will probably be in AUD)

As mentioned, the RF detector is overly sensitive to the point where you have to turn down the sensitivity quite low to make it usable, which means you have to be within about half a metre distance to the transmitter to detect it. I haven't found any real bugs yet, but it will reliably detect mobile phones, wireless access points, etc.

It is pretty easy to spot cameras with it, I have hidden my phone around the house as a test and there is a noticeable glint from the camera lens when looking through the filter with the IR strobe on, so I feel confident it would find any real hidden cameras.

My only other gripe is it doesn't include an Australian power supply, so I had to purchase one separately. Overall it's a nice product, obviously not pro-tier but good for the price.

This is extremely disturbing.

The author may have cherry-picked a few extreme examples, and a majority of Airbnb bookings may go smoothly. Nonetheless, after reading that article, I’ll probably not use Airbnb ever again. FUD can be an irrational beast.

There was a case a few years ago of a hotel near where I live which had a maintenance person also installing hidden cameras.

I'm not really sure there's a "solution" here.

Any time barriers to entry are lowered far enough that a market participant doesn't have enough to lose by behaving badly we'll see problems like this.

I've stayed in countless Airbnb rentals and the only time I saw a camera was in a common area shared with other guests. This was disclosed. There is no "hidden camera problem" on Airbnb.

As a (legal) Superhost I place a lot of trust in my guests and have never felt the need to record them. Maybe this is because I meet at my guests in person or have a trusted friend do so. I've never felt the need to record what is going on. I am able to check my Wi-Fi remotely and see how many devices are logged on, but also don't care to do so.

If you feel the need to record guests constantly you're either a) too nervous, b) creepy or c) a commercial operator.

That being said Airbnb has put a lot of pressure on hosts to accept guests with no previous reviews. They also no longer let hosts see guests' profile pictures until after booking a booking is accepted. This makes it harder for hosts to trust guests.

>I've stayed in countless Airbnb rentals and the only time I saw a camera was in a common area shared with other guests. This was disclosed. There is no "hidden camera problem" on Airbnb.

The thing about hidden cameras is that you can't see them. They're hidden. Unless you did a full electronics sweep on every place you stayed, that fact that you can't recall seeing one means nothing.

The article mentions Nmap as a way of identifying cameras on the network. Does anyone know how robust of a solution this is, or if there are other ways of ensuring that any cameras are found?

Nmap can run a scan to find devices on the same network as your computer. It's fairly robust at detecting/identifying networked hosts. It won't find cameras that only record offline to a memory card and it won't find cameras that are on a different network (like if you're on a special guest network).

Edit: for example, my home network has an IP cam. So when I run the following to scan my home subnet:

    nmap 10.0.0.0/24

I get an output that includes:

    Nmap scan report for ipcam_00626E4E5B97_1.local (10.0.0.50)
    Host is up (0.023s latency).
    Not shown: 999 closed ports
    PORT   STATE SERVICE
    80/tcp open  http

From that I can deduce that 10.0.0.50 is a camera and serving some sort of management web page.

Not robust at all. It assumes that the person who set up the cameras and the network is basically just an amateur. Anyone with even a basic level of expertise in networking could architect their network so that cameras would be completely hidden from devices on whatever network guests would join.

An idiotic recommendation, but perhaps good for catching cameras placed by idiots. The cameras I’ve used aren’t even IP cameras.

The fing app would be a better, more widely available and usable suggestion. With the same downsides though.

Say what you want about Facebook, but at least they put an incredible amount of resources into hiring humans to deal with their problems that require good human judgment. They can of course do this because they basically print money. What about companies who operate on thin margins like Uber and Airbnb? (Uber at some point had been spending hundreds of millions of dollars on customer support, to their credit.)

It seems that regulation is the only way to force investment into mitigating these externalities for their customers.

Say what you want about Facebook, but at least they put an incredible amount of resources into hiring humans to deal with their problems that require good human judgment.

They most certainly did not do that out of the goodness of their heart, but were more or less forced to after their platform was used as a conduit for genocide, which they ignored for years and for other very unsavory and partially illegal practices.

Most of the moderators are contractors, who make slightly above minimum wage and have absolutely horrible jobs and work under dreadful conditions[1]

Using Facebook as some role model is disengenious, at best.

[1] https://gizmodo.com/the-horrifying-lives-of-facebook-content...

Without going into too much detail, sophisticated operators of hidden cameras are operating in a “golden age.” The examples caught by guests are frightfully amateurish... the technology is way ahead of the common knowledge here.

Anybody want to buy the domains airbnbsextapes.{TLD} and forward them to this article?

Marriott also has a hidden camera problem.

https://money.cnn.com/2016/04/25/media/erin-andrews-hotel-se...

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