Slashdot Mirror
Airbnb Has a Hidden-Camera Problem (theatlantic.com)
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."
You are staying in someone's house and they have no oversight by any authority.... what did you THINK was going to happen?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
the reason people choose to stay in AirBNB is because they know they will be recorded.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
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.
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.
Considering most (all?) of these cameras are cloud-based, and thus rely on an Internet connection, just disconnect the modem/router when you first arrive if you're really that concerned about it and only re-connect it when you need to use it for something. Problem solved.
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.
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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? Just take your own photos before renting, which prove they trashed it, and the consequences fall on the person responsible). Not to lay blame after it's been trashed.
And in the same way that the people renting the place can trash it without consequences, the people who are renting it out can breach privacy, record sex tapes and not tell anyone without consequences. Maybe not by the letter of the law, but Airbnb wouldn't have these problems in the first place if everyone just abided by the law.
The problem is endemic to the service they're trying to provide - because they are providing it outside any bounds of normality or sensibility. Maybe if you said "To use Airbnb you must lay down a $1000 deposit which we will only refund to your account when the owner says that the condition is good, the property wasn't misused and nothing was stolen" and then use normal renting/surveying normalities to assess that. Then one deposit of $1000, and keeping sensible, keeps your costs down to cheap places only, and you get your $1000 back. And trashing a place costs you $1000 a time, minimal.
But at the moment you can pay a pittance for one person, rent out someone's posh flat for the day, invite 1000 people over, trash it, and pretty much the consequences are minimal. Guess who's gonna use that... drug dens, raves, teenage drunken bashes, brothels. Next day, do the same but have your mate sign up and choose the venue instead of you, and then divide the rent by 1000 people each to cover the cost. Who the hell is going to know? And it'll take 1000 such incidents before you get anywhere near difficulty in signing up with a new account.
Airbnb is a stupid idea. And they aren't monitoring either of their customers properly, as it shows.
Either *AirBNB* come in, certify the place is in good nick, take ID of the renting party, take a deposit, take responsibility for their actions, have insurance, rectify any damage, and check at the end of the rental to ensure everything is how it was, or you're basically putting a sign in a shop window saying "House to rent / trash, $100 a day, no checks required".
Just quite what part are AirBNB playing in the entire transaction? They run a website. That's about it.
P.S. you can't secure anything in a house that someone with a couple of minutes and a few tools can't get into. Not even a safe. Let alone entire fecking rooms.
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?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
That brings up another issue: if AirBnb in indemnifying renters whose property gets damaged, what's to stop them from renting to someone, coming in after they leave and trashing the place, and having AirBnb pick up the tab for their remodel? I'm pretty sure some people have tried it...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Cameras are everywhere. They are getting smaller and more plentiful every year. The world truly is a stage and we are the players. Be smarter than a politician and just assume you are always being recorded.
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?
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 places against recording people without them knowing. I wouldn't say the desire to see what renters are doing to a property is in any way "fringe" and I think you are quite a horrible person for attempting to belittle the people trying ti make money from personal property.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Less than a week ago, a couple of guys were busted 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.