Airbnb Has a Hidden-Camera Problem (theatlantic.com) 127
Airbnb says it's cracking down on hosts who record guests. But is it doing enough? From a report: Airbnb's rules allow cameras outdoors and in living rooms and common areas, but never in bathrooms or anywhere guests plan to sleep, including rooms with foldout beds. 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.
Of course, hosts have plenty of reason to train cameras on the homes they rent out to strangers. They can catch guests who attempt to steal, or who trash the place, or who initially say they're traveling alone, then show up to a property with five people. A representative for Airbnb's Trust & Safety communications department told me the company tries to filter out hosts who may attempt to surveil guests by matching them against sex-offender and felony databases. The company also uses risk scores to flag suspicious behavior, in addition to reviewing and booting hosts with consistently poor scores.
If a guest contacts Airbnb's Trust & Safety team with a complaint about a camera, employees offer new accommodations if necessary and open an investigation into the host. [...] But four guests who found cameras in their rentals told The Atlantic the company has inconsistently applied its own rules when investigating their claims, providing them with incorrect information and making recommendations that they say risked putting them in harm's way. "There have been super terrible examples of privacy violations by AirBnB hosts, e.g., people have found cameras hidden in alarm clocks in their bedrooms," wrote Jeff Bigham, a computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon whose claim was initially denied after he reported cameras in his rental. "I feel like our experience is in some ways more insidious. If you find a truly hidden camera in your bedroom or bathroom, Airbnb will support you. If you find an undisclosed camera in the private living room, Airbnb will not support you."
Of course, hosts have plenty of reason to train cameras on the homes they rent out to strangers. They can catch guests who attempt to steal, or who trash the place, or who initially say they're traveling alone, then show up to a property with five people. A representative for Airbnb's Trust & Safety communications department told me the company tries to filter out hosts who may attempt to surveil guests by matching them against sex-offender and felony databases. The company also uses risk scores to flag suspicious behavior, in addition to reviewing and booting hosts with consistently poor scores.
If a guest contacts Airbnb's Trust & Safety team with a complaint about a camera, employees offer new accommodations if necessary and open an investigation into the host. [...] But four guests who found cameras in their rentals told The Atlantic the company has inconsistently applied its own rules when investigating their claims, providing them with incorrect information and making recommendations that they say risked putting them in harm's way. "There have been super terrible examples of privacy violations by AirBnB hosts, e.g., people have found cameras hidden in alarm clocks in their bedrooms," wrote Jeff Bigham, a computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon whose claim was initially denied after he reported cameras in his rental. "I feel like our experience is in some ways more insidious. If you find a truly hidden camera in your bedroom or bathroom, Airbnb will support you. If you find an undisclosed camera in the private living room, Airbnb will not support you."
No surprise (Score:4)
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So, basically bad actors are going to do this:
Take "before" picture
Trash the place
Copy airbnb-before.jpg to airbnb-after.jpg
If they are really crafty, maybe they'll go into the EXIF data and change some timestamps and maybe change the brightness and contrast settings of the picture so it looks slightly different.
Submit the "before" and "after" pictures to Airbnb.
When the damage claim comes in, just say "Hey, burglars must have come in and wrecked the place after I left!"
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Not hard.
I take two sets of images in the first ten minutes of getting there, modify the dates on them, trash the place, claim them to be my "before" and "after" images, and then the next guy who rents it out starts with a trashed place and there's not really much you can do. Or, hell, just tidy the bits and pick the right camera angle.
This isn't rocket science. The aim is to stop your place getting trashed by people who have little to no consequences for doing so (Or else why would you need the camera?
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if AirBnb in indemnifying renters whose property gets damaged...
I assume you meant is, and that is just charming. AirBnB is an app and a website, and they take 0% liability and 0% risk. The owner and renter take on 100% and AirBnB walks away with a slice of the profit.
There have been bunches of stories about how homeowners have come back to trashed places, AirBnB won't help, and their homeowner's insurance won't cover it because they didn't have commercial renters insurance.
Like most startup/gig economy companies, you get what you pay for with AirBnB.
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You are outlining a system that adds several hundred dollars of overheads to each rental, and therefore eliminates the concept of short term, non commercial rentals.
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Hotels are immune from this problem (Score:2)
Sorry that's not something I want to worry about on my vacation, still sticking with a fairly known hotel chain.
That's right, hotel rooms are special anti-camera zones; there's no problems with hidden cameras there [cbsnews.com].
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Recording people with an expectation of privacy like in a bedroom or bathroom without disclosure is defacto illegal in most states
As long as airbnb is not recognized as an hotel, the owner records whatever they want in their own private apartment.
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I guess that depends on the laws in your country. In the U.S., it is a felony.
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It seems to me that the laws in most places would be the authority providing oversight. A landlord cannot place a surveillance device inside a tenants rental, at least in the states that I am aware of, and it could very well be a federal crime as well. I guess you could agree to allow the landlord to record you, but who in their right mind would do that? And are they getting approval from every single person staying on the property? if not, it is illegal. This is not an AirBnB problem. This is a problem wit
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You are staying in someone's house and they have no oversight by any authority.... what did you THINK was going to happen?
Actually you do.
Many countries have privacy acts specifically for accommodation providers which expressly prohibit the secret recording of guests, especially in private. As a hotelier put it to me once, cameras in the hallway, not in the rooms. Even then there are regulations as to how these recordings are to be secured and how long they can be kept for.
AirBNB is completely legal here in the UK, but operators are still responsible for complying with the laws. Recording people in private without expres
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Not enough of them (Score:1, Funny)
is the problem. And not enough zoom!
Your,
The president
cameras are not allowed in hotel rooms or apartmen (Score:2)
cameras are not allowed in hotel rooms or apartments.
timeshares likely are the same way.
Now under the law in some areas airbnb is seen as an hotel room so they may not be legal at all.
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cameras are not allowed in hotel rooms or apartments.
They are allowed in hotel lobbies, elevators, stairwells, and hallways. Is an Airbnb's living room area under the same category?
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Airbnb's living room area is in side an full house that is rented out as one likely = an apartment
Maybe... (Score:4, Informative)
Do we get a discount? (Score:2)
Some people would take the discount?
Or just put it in the legal agreement text... it's not like people bothered to pay attention to facebook etc.
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Some people would take the discount?
We'll knock off 10% for the bathroom cam.
An additional 25% for the bedroom cam!
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As a male with no sense of shame, DEAL!
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Coming to a television network near you...
Hidden camera recordings of sleeping guests, with strangers walking around and watching them sleep.
Sharing economy at it's best (Score:4, Insightful)
This is an interesting aspect to the sharing economy that nobody talks about. With the industrialized versions of things like hotels and taxis and the like, the companies are subject to oversight and regulation that eliminates the fringes of society from causing problems. The sharing economy skirts those regulations and allows individuals to become competitive with the big companies in those areas, but with no oversight the people in the weird fringes of society become front and center.
What happens when someone releases online a video of a minor changing or in the bathroom? AirBnB would argue they're not responsible, but they enabled and could be considered an accessory. Does it bring the whole thing down?
It seems like all these sharing economy deals are constantly fighting the fringe of society's weird habits, all the way to the point where they die or they end up looking like the highly regulated industries they were trying to disrupt.
Re:Sharing economy at it's best (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, it's almost like modern laws are the product of thousands of years of patching over the shittier bits of human nature for the purpose of keeping civilisation mostly working, and not some conspiracy to make it hard to accumulate wealth, but that can't be right.
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"sharing economy"
There is no new sharing economy. It always existed before and after. Hotels grew out of this. regulations were established to protect the consumer. Here comes the Internet and technology that facilitates. It facilitates the ease of finding and it also facilitates scams. AirBnB doesn't want to assume any responsibility but are being forced kicking and screaming.
AirBnB is such an irresponsible company that it refuses to post reviews where people have been scammed. Properties listed were filth
What happens? Jail. (Score:3)
The sharing economy skirts those regulations and allows individuals to become competitive with the big companies in those areas, but with no oversight the people in the weird fringes of society become front and center.
So what do we call Slashdot ACs? The Aristocrats.
Your elitism is appalling.
What happens when someone releases online a video of a minor changing or in the bathroom?
Jail, because there are laws against that kind of thing you know?
In particular for this topic, there are in fact laws in many pla
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With the industrialized versions of things like hotels and taxis and the like, the companies are subject to oversight and regulation that eliminates the fringes of society from causing problems. The sharing economy skirts those regulations and allows individuals to become competitive with the big companies in those areas, but with no oversight the people in the weird fringes of society become front and center.
Isn't that why taxis and hotels existed in the first place, though? What is the new part?
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It's been nice proving you wrong.
even the 'acceptable cameras' aren't (Score:5, Insightful)
Airbnb's rules allow cameras outdoors and in living rooms and common areas, but never in bathrooms or anywhere guests plan to sleep, including rooms with foldout beds.
I don't really see how a camera in the living room is acceptable either.
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You already were compensated so your complaint is that the world may not support your business model
Your charge should factor in the probability of sunny-day scenarios x the revenue, he probabilities of poor outcomes with the cost of remediation, plus the value you lost by not having access to the property, plus wear and tear etc.
Since you have taken the risk premia you should insured it, otherwise amortised it across a population of consumers, or accept the risk, depending on your risk appetite.
Re:even the 'acceptable cameras' aren't (Score:5, Insightful)
"Looking forward to hearing you complain when you let a bunch of randoms stay in your house while you're away and they end up trashing it "
I wouldn't let randos stay in my house while I was away. So I will never have that problem.
And if I did purchase a 2ndary property to rent out to randos, I'd furnish it accordingly, and insure it accordingly, and then charge accordingly. And I still wouldn't put a camera in the living room.
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Re:even the 'acceptable cameras' aren't (Score:4, Interesting)
"There is plenty of evidence others would."
Sure. Lots of people are stupid and do stupid things. We don't even need hard evidence of that, but I agree lots of people rent their house out to randos without thinking it through.
For what its worth though, I've rented a fair number of short term rentals around the world, and all the ones I've stayed at were NOT someone's regular home -- they have been 2ndary properties permanently run as short term rentals, furnished accordingly, nice, clean, but nothing especially valuable in them; and in most of the cases I even interacted with a property manager rather than the property owner.
"And there is no real hard evidence you would not other than some declaration made anonymously in slashdot."
Hard evidence of me personally? Sure I guess not, but there is plenty of hard evidence that LOTS of people are running their short term rentals the same way I claimed I would. Go look at airbnd... lots of them are clearly and obviously no one's primary residence. And there is also plenty of hard evidence that lots of people aren't running their primary residence as a short term rental when they go on vacation.
So I'm not sure what your point was in attempting to shoot down my argument by attacking my credibility... surely you don't find it that incredible that people would operate the way I claim to. Surely you agree beyond a doubt that there are plenty of people doing exactly what I claimed I'd do.
I'm guessing AirBnB renters are mostly (Score:2)
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Like i said elsewhere, most short term rentals I've used were permanently run as such, with property managers etc.
I'm not sure what the breakdown is between those and genuine people renting their house when they go on vacation but the pros definitely skew the listings since their units are available 24x7 365 a year unless someone else has already booked it... instead of a week or two here and there when the owners aren't home.
And I prefer dealing with the pros -- for them its a business, they're less likel
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That's the beauty of it. You can rent out your property without a camera. Other property owners can put in a camera, inform the renter, and charge a lower rental fee because they don't have to insure as heavily as you do. And the renter can choose which they prefer - no camera but higher cost, or lower cost
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Airbnb's rules allow cameras outdoors and in living rooms
Are you kidding me? How this can be acceptable at all?
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Yeah, that's not really a vacation unless you and your significant other have successfully "christened" every room in the place, including the basement and the backyard hammock.
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I wouldn't put one inside though, that's just going to creep people out.
The problem is that most hosts don't say cameras are inside the apartment, and guests don't know.
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Because the Hotel Lobby is *eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil*
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Are you seriously comparing the expectation of privacy in a hotel lobby to the living room in your hotel suite?
Disconnect from the Internet (Score:3)
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Very frequently that modem/router isn't accessible. The last couple spots I've stayed have been in duplexes, with the wifi/modem located in the other unit. Additionally, tampering with such electronics is likely a violation of the AirBnB user policy and would likely cause you not to be able to use the service again.
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Of course you're assuming you have physical access to the wireless router, which may or may not be true.
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You are posting this on a technology forum. Do you honestly think you can identify my router or the five access points? Short of cutting off the home's wiring connection to the grid someone with half of a mind doing something like this "to protect their property" would certainly not have this connected through the visible connection.
Airbnb (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee, it's almost like it's a bad idea to use a middleman to rent out your home on a per-day basis to random strangers who you don't trust enough to not put cameras everywhere, and who don't want you to put cameras everywhere, and where the middleman says you can't put cameras everywhere without telling everyone what the cameras can't see and some places you can't put cameras at all, and then relying on some unspoken trust model to make it all work.
I can't see a problem with that business model *at all*.
Airbnb is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard of. It has nothing *but* advantages for the people renting those places out, and nothing *but* disadvantages for the person doing the renting.
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>Airbnb is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard of. It has nothing *but* advantages for the people renting those places out, and nothing *but* disadvantages for the person doing the renting.
Advantages for the host : They get money.
Advantages for the guest : It usually costs less. It's often available in places that hotels are not available.
Disadvantages for the host : They don't get to use the property they are renting out for their own purposes. There's a shitton of cleaning to do.
Disadvant
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I would say one disadvantage to the guest, though some might view it as an advantage, is that the experience isn't predictable. My family almost always uses a specific chain of hotels because we've always been happy with the rooms we've rented so far as cleanliness, smell, amenities, furnishings and in particular the feel of the mattresses that they use. It's the same reason chain restaurants are so popular, they provide a consistent experience.
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This is true. However there is generally a lot of user review available to the guest before booking. There is also host reviewing of the guests. So everyone is generally on their best behaviour if they plan to keep using AirBnB. I've been in some pretty bad hotels and yet the reviews will be great - probably heavily polluted with fake reviews. AirBnB reviews are limited to actual guests who have been there.
The issue of a hotel not being available seems to be a bigger one. Try getting a place in a non-hotel-
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Amen to that.
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Yes. We make of point of saying we won't come in the room unless you ask us to.
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nothing *but* disadvantages for the person doing the renting.
...Price?
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you take the risk (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if you pay for the Hampton, there are a bunch of things that come with it. It is unlikely that you are going to be filmed having sex because the entire assets of the corporation are going to be up for grabs when some wiley lawyer takes the case.
On there other hand, there is no reason that an AirBnB renter has not to film you having sex, or that AirBnb has to prevent this. There renter is going to have minimal exposure, and AIrBnB has none as long as it makes a passing effort to say it does not support such actions.
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I find it astonishing that anyone is interested in this business model. Even if you have a vacation home or something that is usually vacant there are property management companies that do things like properly vet renters; help make sure you have the right types of insurance (or sell it to you), have cheaper bulk contracts with maid services etc to handle clean up before and after renters visit. Yes they take a bigger bit of the action than Airbnb does of course but on the other hand they take on a lot mo
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That's what umbrella insurance is for. In my case, I gross $30k+ per year from my vacation rental, so it's more than a few hundred bucks. And because I do all the management work, my expenses are tax deductible. For me, Airbnb has been great, and 95% of the guests I have had have been pretty perfect. The couple who were less than perfect didn't actually do any real damage.
Re: you take the risk (Score:1)
The issue is not risk to the renter. I have no doubt I could make 30k a year selling amateur hidden videos of couples having sex. It is the risk to the renter and lack of remediation. Is Airbnb going to compensate anyone when a drunk relative terrorizes a guest not knowing that the guest is not the xwife. This happened to a friend if mine.
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The risk is low. 2 years of renting out and we've had precisely 0 problems with guests.
There are plenty of reasons to no film guests in their rooms. (A) Not being a total shit (B) Avoiding being arrested and thrown in jail (C) Avoiding losing AirBnB income.
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You are probably missing out on revenue generation potential of live streaming various parts of your home surreptitiously.
I think there's everything wrong with it. (Score:2)
I'd like to see AirBnB regulated until they're either safe and have little or no negative impact on communities (or at least significantly less than
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You say that as though we as a society wanted varying amounts of risk/reward. We didn't. We voted for regulations that set a minimum level. Avoiding that level is illegal and, frankly, the government needs to do far more to force AirBnB to fall in line or take a hike.
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Because nearly all AirBnB rentals are in violation of the law.
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Nope, you just have no idea what the law is, being a moron generally.
A lot of locations have laws against short term rentals (ie, hotels) in residential zones or properties. Many also have hotel taxes that AirBnB properties avoid paying even they are operating as hotels, and generally aren't up to code for fire/safety conditions the law specifies for hotels.
If I am on camera .. (Score:3)
If I am on camera then it's the owner who has a problem .. because he gets to see me walk around naked and sit on the furniture naked and peer out the window naked and surf for "not-porn" naked etc etc etc
And I am not exactly a male model
But yeah .. I shouldn't have to worry about being spied on. AirBnB already has my cc and other details so it would be easy for them to track me down after the fact.
Now I am wondering if if some sort of infrared laser gizmo exists that would blank out all the cameras in a room?
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If you know the location of a camera you can point an infrared lamp at it. This will saturate the sensor. The bonus is that you won't see it so it won't bother you.
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That brings up the question (Score:2)
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Get Over It (Score:2)
commentsubject (Score:2)
Awful lot of people here seem to be oozing with anxiety, as though they had an assumption of being in a nice, invisible, private domain. Which is fine to expect in my own home, but not something I'd naively entertain in this scenario.
These are probably the same people who are oblivious to the ocean of invisible databases they're swimming in. With data regarding them. The people who happily facetweet the day away then shout "how is that legal" when shit comes to roost, when their insurance goes up about some
I rent two units via AirBNB and I have cameras (Score:1)
And I fully disclose them to the renters.
They are located in places like living rooms and kitchens and hallways. They are obvious and in your face. The power cord is plugged into a wall outlet directly below the camera. Renters are instructed to unplug the power if uncomfortable but are required to plug back in when checking out. 99% renters do exactly that with zero complaints. 1 renter didn't unplug it and did walk around the house naked. It was their choice and they never said anything to me. I deleted t
Is this really AirBNB-specific? (Score:3)
Less than a week ago, a couple of guys were busted [cbsnews.com] for planting 30 cameras in hotel rooms in Korea. They then sold the livestreams to subscribers.
I don't see this as a problem created by AirBNB disrupting the hotel industry; it's a result of small, cheap, network accessible cameras.
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30 cameras found in all the hotel rooms in the US is a very low rate of cameras. I imagine the rate of hidden cameras in AirBnBs are at least 2 orders of magnitude higher.
What about cameras left behind by customers? (Score:2)
I can see another problem with guests installing tiny hidden cameras, tapped into main power (say a bathroom light) and using WiFi internet to stream videos.
Airbnb Has a Hidden-Camera Problem (Score:2)
How is this Airbnb's problem? They have policies in place against them and they appear to enforce those policies. So, how is it Airbnb's problem?
No. The problem belongs completely to two parties, with a third party, the police, having to deal with this. The two parties are (wait for it, I know this will be surprising as fuck to everyone) the host and the guest.
I am not even going to read the article (is there one even linked?) because the title says, "I was written by a noob SJW who assumes they know everyt
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AirBnB isn't for renting out your home, it's for renting out your other properties and eschewing all regulation regarding hotels, tenant's rights, short term rentals, etc.
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AirBnB isn't for renting out your home, it's for renting out your other properties and eschewing all regulation regarding hotels, tenant's rights, short term rentals, etc.
A guy I work with rents out an inlaw suite that is attached to his house. I've seen AirBnBs where people are renting out basements while occupying the upper floors of a house.