Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

isc.sans.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 323 posts

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#221

Post by Symbiote »

jkoudys wrote: post #215
dylan604 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However you have to pay a bit more. I've been looking into AirBnB for certain situations, and because people tell me they are cheaper than hotels. However, I have found that in a lot of cases, hotels end up being cheaper. The big gotcha is the prices shown are the fee for the room (or house or whatever), but then at the end they tack on exorbitant "cleaning" fees that I have found to be greater than the rental fee.…

Yeah those cleaning fees are bullshit. I don't want to see the prices of only one item on a list shown on the map, I want to see how much it actually costs to stay there. tbf you'll see this on a lot of hotel bookings too. We just got back from a week in NYC, and most booking systems (either hotels or airbnbs) were a massive slog. Try to airbnb an okay place in the Bronx for $110/night? Click through and see an $80 c…

In at least some cases the tourist tax is only for tourists. Business visitors don't need to pay the tax, if they show some evidence that it's a business trip.

An example is Cologne's "Culture tax": https://www.stadt-koeln.de/politik-und-verwaltung/steuern-ge...

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#222

Post by terryf »

adwww wrote: post #209
terryf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reasons I don't stay in airbnbs - the system breaks the social contract. The reason hotels are more expensive is because they have to follow a bunch of rules that makes everyone's life a bit better by having insurance for risks and zoning and so on. However you have to pay a bit more. So, if you ever find yourself complaining "I wish people did something in a not the absolute cheapest and effortles…

I've personally used AirBnb when I've stayed somewhere on my own and just wanted a spare room to crash in, with the added bonus of some company, and also to rent an entire detached house in the French countryside with my family for 2 weeks. Both of these AirBnb offered something way better than a hotel. I do agree that that middle ground - a whole apartment in a mixed residential building - is problematic, and I'd fe…

You make a good point - the "rent out my couch" type of thing and "rent out a whole separate house" admittedly break my argument a little bit.

However there are still the questions of things like insurance coverage and other safety related topics. Basically if anything goes wrong in a hotel, there is staff who is required to be trained to be able to deal with it. Again, the cost associated with dealing with the 0.05% corner cases is distributed to everyone in the case of a hotel room, but to the specific person to whom it happens in the airbnb case.

To be fair, if you really want to rent a whole house, the hotel industry doesn't often provide good options ....

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#223

Post by jkoudys »

mrfusion wrote: post #206
JacKTrocinskI wrote: post #6

Or just go to a hotel! I have a condo in a building where most of the units are listed on Airbnb or Booking.com, quality of life for residents like me has been drastically reduced by noisy tourists that come for a weekend trip and have no regard for keeping it quiet or keeping the shared spaces clean. I hope more cities begin to ban Airbnb. Tourists belong in hotels not in buildings where families try to live their d…

As another option. What if we banned the disruptive behavior? Maybe neighbors can leave reviews on guests? Maybe a unit can be forced to be delisted with enough complaints? Who knows but automatically banning things isn’t always the answer.

What's definitely not the answer is leaving valuable real estate empty. I'm out of town a couple weekends a month, and travel to visit the wife's family overseas for around a month every year. No way to do short term rentals (our building has a 6mo minimum), so a property that could be generating almost $9k/y for us is instead a liability. Extremely frustrating when we're new parents just getting by, and a bunch of wealthy old people or young people who inherited their big ~$800k+ units have made this decision for us.

Not saying any complaints about guests are baseless, but they're balancing a small amount of comfort for them against what would be life-changing value for us.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#224

Post by jobigoud »

briantailor wrote: post #83

I'm always nervous when I went through Airbnb because you are never really 100% certain until you arrive. While it is significantly cheaper than a hotel or even hostel sometimes it is just better to pay a bit extra and be secure with your choice.

What makes you "really 100% certain" about hotels?

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#225

Post by TeMPOraL »

voidwtf wrote: post #154
terryf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reasons I don't stay in airbnbs - the system breaks the social contract. The reason hotels are more expensive is because they have to follow a bunch of rules that makes everyone's life a bit better by having insurance for risks and zoning and so on. However you have to pay a bit more. So, if you ever find yourself complaining "I wish people did something in a not the absolute cheapest and effortles…

I would argue that ‘people’ break the social contract. These people know where they are, what time it is, and mostly what’s expected of their surroundings. I think they just don’t care. I’m guessing it’s similar to anonymity on the Internet, where people behave differently because they don’t expect to have to face those they harm.

Yes, it's people who break social contract. The sin of AirBnB isn't that they create those people where they didn't exist before. The sin of AirBnB is that they organize those people on a massive scale and put them in a position where breaking the social contract is the default behavior.

Tourists are noisy and careless. That's to some extent forgivable - tourism is a leisure activity. Hotels and other legit tourism-oriented businesses are prepared for it and mostly take care of it (and are appropriately regulated to make sure they do). But take the same tourists doing the same things and sprinkle them around neighborhoods where regular people live and raise families - in that context, their behavior becomes disturbing and destructive to the quality of those neighborhoods. It's breaking social contract.

The sin of AirBnB is that they know they're making the world a worse place, and they don't care. They just keep doing it.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#226

Post by jkoudys »

Symbiote wrote: post #221
jkoudys wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah those cleaning fees are bullshit. I don't want to see the prices of only one item on a list shown on the map, I want to see how much it actually costs to stay there. tbf you'll see this on a lot of hotel bookings too. We just got back from a week in NYC, and most booking systems (either hotels or airbnbs) were a massive slog. Try to airbnb an okay place in the Bronx for $110/night? Click through and see an $80 c…

In at least some cases the tourist tax is only for tourists. Business visitors don't need to pay the tax, if they show some evidence that it's a business trip. An example is Cologne's "Culture tax": https://www.stadt-koeln.de/politik-und-verwaltung/steuern-ge...

Interesting -- I'll look into that for NYC. I'm CTO at a startup based in Toronto, but we have a tiny space in Manhattan so it's pretty easy for me to schedule some business there and have my family tag along.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#227

Post by fastball »

pen2l wrote: post #200
noxToken wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is one of the reasons I don't stay in airbnbs - the system breaks the social contract. But it doesn't. People are breaking the social contract by not respecting the area. If I invite friends from out of town over for the weekend, is that breaking the social contract? If I'm going away for 2 weeks, and I have friends house sit for the duration, is that breaking the social contract? Tourists and visitors existing…

> If I invite friends from out of town over for the weekend, is that breaking the social contract? That's different. You know your friends. You don't know your airbnb guests, and the reviews are only worth so much. I can't find the article now, but some porn company had an easy time gaming airbnb by getting good reviews in the beginning and using the place for shoots on the 10th stay or whatever. And, as a person who…

Right, so the owner is potentially breaking the social contract by maybe allowing someone without respect for others to stay in their home (though ratings systems are generally used exactly to allow this type of vetting in advance).

But the guest is not automatically breaking the social contract by staying in an AirBnB, which is what was implied by the OC.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#228

Post by rodw »

BurningFrog wrote: post #196
ineedasername wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.google.com/search?q=social+contract Basically it's the understanding that we're all in this together and we shouldn't mess things in some way for other people purely for our own benefit. Think of it as avoiding negative-sum situations. More formally: an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protectio…

It's also something no one ever signed, and is a concept loved only by those benefiting from the current order.

I think I'm probably more pro-revolution that most, but c'mon, really? You really think that basic rules of human courtesy are the boot on the neck of humanity?

We're talking about something much more fundamental than social norms you might call patriarchal or cis-/hetero-normative or anything like that. This is the kind of behavior that keeps you from getting punched. And most people are explicitly taught these behaviors as children, whether in pre-school / kindergarten or just by being around other children at all.

Surely we can identify much more important factors propping up the current social order.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#229

Post by jobigoud »

Here is an evil idea: hotels could start providing smart speakers integrated in the rooms. Call it Smart Room™. This way you can ask the room where the nearest supermarket is or whatever, that would be convenient for an out-of-town trip wouldn't it? Obviously the hotel would record all the requests and then sell the data to local shops / marketers, or even customize the answers for a fee.

There is currently a debate on some Airbnb forums about smart speakers, whether they are a nice-touch or just creepy.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#230

Post by TeMPOraL »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #191
terryf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reasons I don't stay in airbnbs - the system breaks the social contract. The reason hotels are more expensive is because they have to follow a bunch of rules that makes everyone's life a bit better by having insurance for risks and zoning and so on. However you have to pay a bit more. So, if you ever find yourself complaining "I wish people did something in a not the absolute cheapest and effortles…

> I don't stay in airbnbs - the system breaks the social contract. I didn't know I was party to this contract, and I couldn't tell you what the terms are. I travel a lot for work and I stay almost exclusively in AirBnb because I like having my money and a nice home-like experience. I still don't understand how society would benefit from AirBnb not existing and us being where we started with the hotel cabal.

> the hotel cabal.

"Hotel cabal" is bullshit. Slightly less bullshit than Uber's "taxi mafia", but still a steaming pile of bovine excrement.

AirBnB is a multinational corporation. It's displacing not just large hotel chains, but also all the local legal forms of short-term accommodation - small hotels, hostels, motels, BnBs, etc.

It really bewilders me that people have fallen for the same reality-inverting marketing propaganda not once, but twice. AirBnB and Uber aren't underdogs fighting cabals, they're SV-money-pumped cabals fighting small local businesses.

Post reply on HN