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How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

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Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#231

Post by Symbiote »

vain wrote: post #164
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…

It isn't true that airbnb rooms cost less than a hotel, at least in Central London. The reason they can appear cheaper is that you can cram 8 people into a small flat or even a room. I was renting a room in a flat in Soho. The other floors slowly got converted to amateur hotels for airbnb/booking. Many a night, I'd see families stuck downstairs with luggage. They would then phone a capricious property manager who wou…

You are much more generous than me.

I avoided the tourists with luggage looking puzzled standing at the front door; if I saw some I'd use the rear door instead.

When they rang my buzzer, I'd tell them AirBnB was banned, and leave the line open so they couldn't buzz anyone else for 2-3 minutes until it disconnected.

I also reported the apartments to the building owner, and they were kicked out after a few months.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#232

Post by terryf »

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.

One thing that's easy to overlook is risk. For example insurance - the hotel is basically liable for things that go wrong there. They also have insurance to make sure they can pay up when needed.

Does your airbnb host have proper insurance? For example you flood the apartment you rented from airbnb and the downstairs apartment owner sues you. IANAL but I'm fairly sure that usually in home insurance cases short term rentals aren't covered.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#233

Post by nemetroid »

alkonaut wrote: post #10
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…

In many cities apartments are normally owned through some kind of co-op with a board that decides things. If that’s the case then I wouldn’t buy one in a building that allows more than temporary subletting. This is the case at least in Sweden, i.e it’s pretty hard to buy-to-let, and that’s normally a good thing (also for price stability).

My impression is that this form of apartment ownership ("bostadsrätt") is uncommon outside of the Nordic countries.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#234

Post by jobigoud »

Someone1234 wrote: post #88
djsumdog wrote: post #62

Hmm .. I had a friend recently who rented out a room on Airbnb and had guests that trashed it. Airbnb did pay damaged on his claim. He rented again and the girl asked if she could rent for a few more months. So they signed a standard city lease outside Airbnb and she hasn't left or paid. He's had to file eviction. That obviously isn't AirBNB's fault, but it's now 2 for 2 bad experiences that started with AirBNB. I wo…

> I wonder how many people install cameras in just the entrances/open areas more as a general liability thing. Can you clarify that? How does adding a camera near the entrance avoid liability? The examples given it wouldn't have helped, particularly if positioned where suggested. Plus in that scenario they should be overt cameras not covert. If for no other reason that there's no real concept of the entrance area bei…

One scenario is if you specify your listing is for 2 persons and you rent to two guests, but then there is a party of 14 and you get back the place trashed. You can prove they lied.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#235

Post by chipperyman573 »

celeritascelery wrote: post #144

What is your recourse if you do happen to find a hidden camera? I mean, is it illegal for someone to hide a camera in their own house and not tell you?

It depends on the state but almost every state has a law saying something along the lines of areas that have elevated natural expectations of privacy - rooms such as bedrooms or bathrooms a reasonable person could expect to have total privacy - cannot be recorded without the consent of every single person in the room. So, in general, yes.

BTW, some states have laws that extend this to an entire living space, including kitchen etc.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#236

Post by ejolto »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #102
danaris wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and there's likely more of them than hotels in any given place. Not in America. You might find a few in & near major cities, but hotels and motels are everywhere , bed & breakfasts are fairly common, and AirBnBs are plentiful.

So what's the correct term for "a cheap hotel, usually without a minibar in the room"? Because that's what we call a "hostel" over where I live, and I assume in the rest of Europe.

Must be a Poland thing. The hostels I've stayed in in western Europe have all had dorms.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#237

Post by Symbiote »

impendia wrote: post #203
rhacker wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let's say I buy a quiet home in a peaceful neighborhood. I've risked my life savings on this home so I can get work done, meditate, relax and not hear barking dogs, children scream, etc.. So you're saying I don't have the right to want those things? That new people coming into that kind of environment should be allowed to, even though there is nearly literally anywhere else in the f-ing world they can go. I'm not…

I certainly believe you have the right to want those things. And moreover, there are noise ordinances and related laws, and I do believe those should be enforced. But, I also believe that new people coming into that kind of environment should be allowed to. People step on each other's toes, and it can be annoying. But I still don't believe that people have the right to keep other people out.

How do I get a noise ordinance enforced, when the noise is 2 minutes of people shouting and clattering luggage down the stairs at 4am on Monday, to get their cheap Ryanair flight home?

My neighbours are much more careful at 4am, and each might only leave like this a couple of times a year. An apartment on AirBnB has this pretty much every week.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#238

Post by [deleted] »

jkoudys wrote: post #226
Symbiote wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#239

Post by TeMPOraL »

fastball wrote: post #227
pen2l wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The OC said, "the system breaks the social contract".

> the owner is potentially breaking the social contract by maybe allowing someone without respect for others to stay in their home

And a person walking around the gas station with an open flame is only potentially a fire hazard, because they may very well get lucky and not set any fuel fumes on fire.

Reality doesn't work like that. You drop the "potentially" once the risk becomes predictably high. The owner is breaking the social contract by putting their neighbors at very high risk of dealing with guests who don't respect other people.

> though ratings systems are generally used exactly to allow this type of vetting in advance

Ranking systems are trivially gamed. One would think everyone knows this by now.

> But the guest is not automatically breaking the social contract by staying in an AirBnB

No, they're not. But if they behave as if they were in a hotel while in a residential-area AirBnB, they most likely are. Maybe they should know better than to behave like that. But AirBnB should know better than enabling this problem in the first place.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#240

Post by SantalBlush »

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.

You can say the exact same thing about property rights or the non-aggression principle.
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