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Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

If cell phone signal is good enough for decent internet coverage at your rental, just unplug the router so you don't have to worry about being watched all the time. One of the benefits of everything going cloud-based is that most of these stupid devices don't work without wifi/internet.

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If a guest were to try this at my Airbnb, I have in my house rules that guests may not disable security devices and an onsite inspection will be performed if they do. And that's exactly the type of guest I would immediately terminate their stay.

This is exactly why Airbnb should be banned everywhere.

Do you think hotels don't have cameras? I'm confused.

Hidden surveillance cameras inside hotel rooms are exceedingly rare. There have been a few isolated incidents where perverted creepy employees installed hidden cameras in rooms but it's not legal or tolerated in the legitimate hotel industry.

There are certainly cameras in hotel public areas where no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy.

And also hotel employees and third party security companies are accountable to the hotels they work for/contract with and often have a handful of cameras watching dozens or hundreds of guests from reasonable distances. Many AirBnBs have 5+ exterior cameras for the single family staying there and who knows who's watching the videos or what they're doing with them. Not to "think of the children" this too much, but there's no way I would take my family to an AirBnB with a pool if there were any cameras pointed in its general direction.

> There are certainly cameras in hotel public areas where no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Right and the article clearly states that all the cameras they had trouble with were outside in public areas. I don't think I've ever been in an airbnb that had cameras inside the house.

I did this and the landlord contacted me saying the internet needed to stay on because he had a front doorbell camera. I’m not sure what Airbnb’s policy is here so I plugged it back in.

Small amount of googling: https://julianoliver.com/output/log_2015-12-18_14-39

Next time I'm in an airbnb I'm definitely nmap'ing and trying this out. ;)

I wonder if there's a way to put them onto a loop instead of taking them down, so the owner doesn't suspect anything?

That's actually an excellent idea!

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