Hidden Camera Concerns Plague Short-Term Rental Industry (cnn.com) 86
An anonymous reader shares a report: A CNN investigation found the use of hidden cameras is a persistent problem in the industry. Regulations are sparse, and the punishments for those that commit these crimes are lenient -- video voyeurism is typically charged as a misdemeanor. Meanwhile, the people who are recorded -- often naked or engaging in sexual activities -- say they suffer from long-term trauma and the fear that their images could, at any moment, be disseminated on the internet. An Airbnb spokesperson told CNN that hidden camera complaints are rare, but when they do occur, "we take appropriate, swift action, which can include removing hosts and listings that violate the policy."
At a court-ordered deposition last year, an Airbnb representative was supposed to answer a key question from the attorney suing the company: How many complaints or reports had been made to Airbnb since December 1, 2013, of people who had been recorded by surveillance devices? The Airbnb representative testified that the company generated 35,000 customer support tickets about surveillance devices in the preceding decade. An Airbnb spokesperson told CNN that a single report could create multiple tickets. The company declined to specify how many unique complaints there have been. In the deposition, which has not been previously reported, the company representative sought to downplay the significance of the number of tickets, testifying they could reflect instances such as a malfunctioning doorbell camera or a tablet with recording capabilities left out on a coffee table. The representative did not provide any statistics detailing the number of claims she suggested were innocuous among the 35,000 tickets.
At a court-ordered deposition last year, an Airbnb representative was supposed to answer a key question from the attorney suing the company: How many complaints or reports had been made to Airbnb since December 1, 2013, of people who had been recorded by surveillance devices? The Airbnb representative testified that the company generated 35,000 customer support tickets about surveillance devices in the preceding decade. An Airbnb spokesperson told CNN that a single report could create multiple tickets. The company declined to specify how many unique complaints there have been. In the deposition, which has not been previously reported, the company representative sought to downplay the significance of the number of tickets, testifying they could reflect instances such as a malfunctioning doorbell camera or a tablet with recording capabilities left out on a coffee table. The representative did not provide any statistics detailing the number of claims she suggested were innocuous among the 35,000 tickets.
Expections.. (Score:5, Insightful)
People have really strange expectations that people often flaunting zoning and occupancy laws, are going to turn around and respect renters / privacy rights rules...
A scofflaw is a scofflaw
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I suppose it happens, but my experience with Airbnb has always seemed very above-board. I think most hosts are interested in following the rules.
My last three rentals have even had their licenses posted on the wall.
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"seemed very above-board" -> And that's all.
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Unless there is daily inspection of qualified people and not one that doesnt care or is the one that planted them, then I dont see anyone validating the industry is safe from these people.
The reality is, they need tracking on these devices, and they need laws that wreck peoples lives if they do this and post the videos online.
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Thanks for pointing that out. Hotel cameras have been a problem for years, to one extent or another. It's unsurprising that vacation rentals would have similar problems.
Re:Expections.. (Score:5, Insightful)
People like you keep reminding me that apparently no-one knows the difference between "flouting" and "flaunting" any more.
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Irregardless, I imply from your response that your an English language purist.
Re:Expections.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Irregardless, I imply from your response that your an English language purist.
There's a difference between being a language purist and pointing out something that has a literal different meaning to what is said. Flouting means to disregard, flaunting means to display in a way to invoke envy.
If you want to use the modern version of "begs the question" go for it, language evolves. If you use the wrong word completely changing the meaning of what you were trying to say then I could care less. *note: that means I do care.
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*Whoosh!*
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No whoosh here. In a post of bad English making a "joke" with bad English can't be considered a joke. The default here is to assume someone is writing something stupid because that's Slashdot these days.
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Then why would you choose to reply to what is clearly a joke as if it was a serious post? You did the equivalent of writing a response that describes the circumstances under which a chicken could plausibly cross the road. I'm not sure you gained anything.
If I had posted bad English in a post that didn't have anything to do with bad English, that would have been nonsense. Doubling down on it is what makes it a joke.
And you knew that already. You said as much when you replied, "No whoosh here." You got it - s
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Irregardless, I imply from your response that your an English language purist.
There's a difference between being a language purist and pointing out something that has a literal different meaning to what is said. Flouting means to disregard, flaunting means to display in a way to invoke envy.
If you want to use the modern version of "begs the question" go for it, language evolves. If you use the wrong word completely changing the meaning of what you were trying to say then I could care less. *note: that means I do care.
You at least did the service of explaining the difference.
What makes language pedants seem like absolute wankers is that they deride others without explaining why or offering to assist in correcting the error. It seems like they just want to feel superior without actually doing anything to deserve recognition. If you're going to pick on the language of other people, at least explain why.
Flouting and flaunting at least sound similar so it's entirely possible, with the 170,000 words in the Oxford Engli
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People have really strange expectations that people often flaunting zoning and occupancy laws
In many cases they aren't. A large problem with Airbnb is that the local zoning and occupancy laws simply don't take into account short term rentals. In much of the world no one is *flouting* anything.
Scummy (Score:5, Insightful)
AirBnB are a scummy company.
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Any company that outsources capital expenses to individual consumers but rakes in most of the revenue is scummy. Whether it's a home via Airbnb or a car via Uber. And then somehow these companies still manage to lose money.
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I'm starting to think anyone publicly traded and/or has a dedicated "spokesperson that declined to comment...." is a scummy company.
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The two often go together. I've felt for a while that the whole plc system is fundamentally broken. Too many innovative companies that made interesting stuff that all turned into rent-seeking, enshittifying, bureaucratic monstrosities as soon as they went public.
are they all perverts? (Score:5, Insightful)
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People do put these in common areas, but some hosts are also putting these cameras in bedrooms, bathrooms, and some even share pics/vids online.
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So some hidden cameras in your rooms are OK?
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Have you seriously never fucked anywhere but the bedroom?
Geez....I can hardly think of a place in a house/hotel...I've not fucked a girlfriend before.
Hell, that's just indoors of your abode....you never did it outdoors...in a park....Applebee's restroom...front lawn...??
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Most of my hosts have had cameras prominently mounted outside and make sure to tell you about them.
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Re:are they all perverts? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hotels factor in damages as just the cost of doing business. If you're concerned about your property then maybe inviting any random person with a credit card isn't a good idea.
Re:are they all perverts? (Score:4, Informative)
Hotels factor in damages as just the cost of doing business.
Normal wear and tear, yes, hotels eat that cost. Customers willfully damaging property though? As a guest, you've very likely already agreed to compensate the hotel with the credit card you've put on file at the start of your stay, as part of the paperwork nobody reads. Yet again, that's a major difference between truly running your own business versus being a gig economy pawn. A real business can draw up their own contracts directly with their customers and request a card on file, whereas an AirBnB rental is at the mercy of AirBnB's customer support.
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Hotels factor in damages as just the cost of doing business.
Normal wear and tear, yes, hotels eat that cost. Customers willfully damaging property though? As a guest, you've very likely already agreed to compensate the hotel with the credit card you've put on file at the start of your stay, as part of the paperwork nobody reads. Yet again, that's a major difference between truly running your own business versus being a gig economy pawn. A real business can draw up their own contracts directly with their customers and request a card on file, whereas an AirBnB rental is at the mercy of AirBnB's customer support.
Hotels get legal protections that AirBNBs often do not because they're operating outside the rules and regulations. Hence hotels get to charge fees for breakages with far less of a requirement for evidence.
AirBNB tends to come down on the side of the renter because they don't want the additional scrutiny and costs that come with regular law suits.
Hotels also absolutely have to deal with customers regularly, willfully damaging things. Do you think that £300 deposit covers the replacement of a car
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I think maybe if that's a concern they shouldn't AirBnB and should find some new source of "passive income"
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I would guess some of them are checking to make sure the short term tenants aren't wrecking the place.
That's what insurance / inspections are for. There's zero excuse for the invasion of privacy.
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The issue is valid (Score:5, Interesting)
So... through a weird confluence of circumstances, I became a professional pornographer during the pandemic. That's not a joke. There was a fire in my apartment building that left most of the units in my building vacant due to smoke damage, and I found myself with access to furnished apartments and a collection of stripper friends trying to keep their rent and phone bills paid and I just fell in to being the camera / editing / content hosting person for a bunch of people, especially since I had three free shooting locations for about six months before my landlord finally got around to rehabbing the units. I've kept at it. The money I make from my side of it pays for fancy lenses and weekend trips with young and attractive people, but it also means I use AirBNBs a lot. They don't look like hotel rooms and they're clean and basically anonymous (also for what it's worth, I bring towels, sheets, blankets and cleaning supplies for my and my models' peace of mind if not the owner's).
Not long into my adventures in finding places to make porn, I found a little black 1.5A USB charging block in what I thought was a pretty incongruous spot in a bathroom, on the wall opposite the toilet and sort of between the towels that had been set out on the towel rack, which was weirdly on the other side of the bathroom from the shower. I grabbed it and started messing with it and sure enough, it had a pinhole camera. It only recorded when it sensed motion and it had a microSD card in it that contained 1080p video of my porcelain vacation. I unplugged the fucking thing and left it in the freezer and of course I reported the owner to AirBNB.
Since then I've bought and use a spy detector when I'm staying anywhere. I'm perfectly willing to accept a camera at the entrance to a rental unit, but those usually aren't hidden. I've found hidden cameras twice. One was just an endoscopic camera peering out of a planter and the other was inside a smoke detector. Three out of forty or 50 stays in the last three-ish years is often enough that I feel paranoia is justified.
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Re: The issue is valid (Score:3)
The brand name is Max and I paid around $100 for it but the Amazon product link I used is dead.
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The unit I have seems to be an older version of this thing. [amazon.com]
There are cheaper devices that probably do the same thing.
Re: The issue is valid (Score:4, Informative)
An RF detector is only likely to pick up active transmitters, so it'll miss things caching to an SD card. A lot of cameras will have an IR illuminator, and this can be seen with your cell camera. I always sweep rented rooms with my phone before settling in. And of course any object in the room with a small black circle facing outward is worth looking at.
Beyond that, you're probably never going to find one hidden behind a mirror with a bit of the silvering rubbed off, or a few inches back inside a vent. It's mostly stupid placement that gets cameras found... But then again I think the average person placing spy cameras probably isn't a genius.
Re: The issue is valid (Score:2)
I think, given the #s work out to 318 noted tickets per ~= 365 days over the entire time period, that you are insufficiently paranoid.
If the company self-reports an issue almost everyday of every year it has reported for, that the iceberg's tip is exposed. The deeper iceberg is larger.
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For the same reason I don't take anything else in somebody's rental property.
And to be clear, I don't have a problem with even indoor monitoring of what I'd call public areas of a home like a foyer, or a hot tub in the back yard, but there's no reason to monitor a bathroom or a bedroom.
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Spy detector... (Score:2)
Which one is this?
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Oh come on, don't be bashful, it's 2024. There's an audience for it.
The trick is to break the fourth wall by, say, winking at the camera. Pretty soon you'd have a cult following.
Allegedly, President Xi has helpfully left back-doors in the firmware of discount surveillance equipment; you're probably a viral hit on TikTok already without even knowing it.
From the No $hit department (Score:4, Insightful)
AirB&B was always a nasty idea.
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No the idea was great, but like all good ideas it isn't remotely how it is used now. Rent out a spare room in your house? Great! Pickup a passenger on a trip when you're already going to a destination? Excellent. You're going to the supermarket and decide to get some groceries for someone in the street? What a brilliant efficiency!
Unfortunately the idea and what companies like AirBnB, Uber, and Getir are built on aren't remotely how they operate. AirBnB was a great idea. AirBnB as it is now is a piece of sh
AirBnB was great if it stuck to the plan... (Score:2)
It made a lot of sense for anyone approaching things as wanting to provide short-term stays to people as a way to better utilize their residence when they were going to be away. It also made sense for people like me, who own a 2 family duplex but my adult daughter was living in the upstairs unit, before moving out. Without options like AirBnB, I'm left being a traditional landlord if I want to rent it out -- and I don't really want to do that. (Makes more sense for me to leave it all furnished and nice for
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ABB can't dictate what people do in their own homes.
ABB can dictate whatever they want. You don't have to agree to their service.
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Then they are a hotel, not a middleman. If they are dictating the terms of service, they are the employer. You can call the people 'contractors', but if ABB is the employer, as in this case, they are a hotel company and should be forced to abide by the same rules as all other hotels.
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So I'm an eBay employee?
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There is literally no way you work in tech and think that this is how contracts work.
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What exactly is there to punish here? There is zero expectation of privacy when you walk around a hotel property. And unless theyâ(TM)re perverts shoving cameras in toilets the ACTUAL expectation is to expect much of the same level of surveillance at anyoneâ(TM)s property nice enough to rent on a moments notice.
There is absolutely an expectation of privacy in a hotel suite. If hotels were recording people in the beds, it would be huge fucking deal.
Also fucking kills me that the cameras being carried into a home is at least two per narcissist renter due to smartphone addiction. If hypocrisy were a religion, it would be the largest in the known universe.
What the hell are you talking about.
Privacy is expected (Score:2)
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there is zero expectation of privacy when you walk around a hotel property.
AirBnB claims it's not a hotel, hotel rules don't apply. It's a private residence which is rented, rent rules apply. A tenant has expectation of privacy inside his rented residence, every room inside of it.
unless they’re perverts shoving cameras in toilets
And it is. Opened the linked article, the picture is a bedroom under multiple angles. It's not for security.
If people don’t understand this concept
CNN thinks it's wrong, AirBnB admits it's wrong, "2,000 pages of lawsuits and police reports" say it's wrong. Maybe it really is wrong.
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I mean I own property and I don't rent it out to strangers because I know they'll wreck it.
If people don’t understand this concept then they’ll likely never own anything of real value in their entire lives.
I'd argue the opposite. If you think being a landlord or illegal hotel operator or cybertruck car rental service is going to be a walk in the park, you may soon discover that your "passive income" scheme isn't so passive and soon find yourself much less wealthy.
AirBnB is a lot of work and a lot of risk, a serious business person would do a risk analysis and maybe decide not to go there if they can't come up with bett
Re:Why is AirBnB involved? (Score:4, Insightful)
ABB can't dictate what people do in their own homes.
Not what the owners can do in the privacy of their own home, nope. You are 100% correct if that's the circumstance.
You are 100% wrong, however, when it comes to what was being discussed, that is, renting their unit out to guests via a platform like AirBnB, Vrbo and others.
When an owner offers their unit via the AirBnB platform they agree to the terms of service that AirBnB requires an owner to agree to to be listed, aka the legal contract the unit owner agrees to follow. That stipulates they can not have cameras inside their home. It says "We do not allow Hosts to have security cameras or recording devices that monitor *indoor* spaces, even if these devices are turned off."
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Fascinating. (Score:2)
So like how bad of a misdemeanor?
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Depends on the age of the person and if they were masturbating in the shower.
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These are people's private homes and they can do what they want.
Actually they can't. As soon as you engage in a business transaction involving others your ability to do what you want in your home is greatly diminished due to the rights of the others. If I'm coming to your house to visit, tough. If I'm paying you to stay at your house I have a legally protected right to privacy while there.
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Silence is Deafening (Score:2)
Methinks perhaps the actual concerning figure wasn't much below 35k and they tried to leave themselves a lot of damage-control wiggle-room.
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Every complaint means multiple other victims that didn't detect the cameras. actual figure probably in the 100's of thousands.
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I had several bad hosts, the accomodations were misrepresented, much smaller, much fewer accoutrements, lousy mattresses... I didn't bother complaining. I stopped using ABB. I wouldn't recommend using it either.
AirBnB :
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The absolute last thing we should be doing is letting them self-regulate on this issue. They need to be held accountable so that crimes like these don't go unreported & are essentiall
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I'd make them call their support people then and there and run the word "hidden". That's OK. We'll wait. Right now, or you're in contempt.
Hotels (Score:2)
Pervs have been hiding cameras in hotel and motel rooms for years. Why is anyone singling out AirBnB?
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Actually, that's *why* theu're singling out AirBnb. It's arguably why AirBnb exists as they do. I mean, as a business model, certainly it would be more profitable to simply buy vacation properties than to be a middle man . . . right?
Unlike hotels, AirBnb's business model hinges on limiting their liability to exactly this, and as an unsurprising result, it seems far more common there than traditional hotels.
If you find a hidden camera in your Marriott room, you can sue Marriott. If you find a hidden camera i
Hotel chains are more like AirBNB than you think (Score:2)
If you find a hidden camera in your Marriott room, you can sue Marriott. If you find a hidden camera in your Airbnb, you can maybe kind of sue the owner? I mean you can try and sue Airbnb, but the whole structure of the business revolves around the place you're actually staying not being their property, and the host not being their employee.
Maybe, maybe not. Marriott is more like AirBNB than you might think. Most of Marriott properties are operated as franchises (6,716 of 8,861 properties), with Marriott International acting as the middleman. Marriott facilitates room reservations, the rewards program, etc., but an independent entity is likely the one providing the room and on-site services.
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True, but AirBnb doesn't even have a franchise relationship with the hosts. But this isn't theoretical.
I mean, tell that to Michael Irvin. Marriott did in fact, in court, make the case that it was a franchise he was staying at. Pretty sure $100 million is still $100 million, and it would have been much harder to extract the same from AirBnb. (I don't think his settlement was for the full $100 million he was suing for, but . . . still though. AirBnb's entire model is to shield them from exactly that very rea
solution is easy (Score:2)
I always take a few luchador masks along when staying at rentals. Nobody has to know!
Dont bang in a strangers home (Score:2)
derp (Score:2)
undoing erroneous mod