Woman shocked to discover ‘over 10 hidden cameras’ in Airbnb
Helen Coffey
Wed, 15 June 2022 at 12:21 am·3-min read
One of the cameras discovered at the property (Tiktok/@foxytaughtyou)
A woman has shared her “scary” experience of finding what she claims was more than 10 hidden cameras in an
Airbnb rental property.
Twitter user @foxytaughtyou posted that travellers “should be cautious” when booking accommodation, alongside pictures of what appear to be cameras, which she alleges she and a friend found “hidden all over the house” after booking to stay in Philadelphia.
She claimed to have found cameras “in the showers and bedrooms”, while “some were disguised as sprinkler systems but it has a camera lens [sic].”
“The Airbnb was listed under a business name and we never met the owner,” she added. “Every time we tried calling them, even at our arrival they’ll never answer the phone.
“They only respond through message so we do not know how they look, sound or if it’s a male or female.”
The women claim that, after reporting the incident to Airbnb and the Philadelphia police, they were simply moved to another property by the home sharing platform.
“We reported this to [Airbnb] and to the police station Friday noon and still have not had a update on this case,” tweeted @foxytaughtyou on 13 June. “We have no idea what footage this owner has and what he is doing with it!
“This is so UNSAFE, and scary! Thank God we noticed the cameras and got out of there!”
In a Tiktok video, now viewed more than 1.5 million times, she explains that they discovered the cameras after going out for the evening, coming home and falling asleep on the sofa.
When they woke in the morning, they noticed what appeared to be a crudely concealed camera on the ceiling pointing straight down at them.
“We were creeped out and we decided to look everywhere in the Airbnb, all over the ceiling, and see if there’s any more cameras,” she says in a voiceover accompanying the images.
“We discovered that the sprinklers had a camera lens. We got on the chair and we did a flash test on these sprinklers and they are cameras.”
An Airbnb spokesperson told
The Independent: “Our policies strictly prohibit hidden cameras and we take forceful action in the exceptionally rare circumstances where this has been reported, including assisting law enforcement to help them hold criminals accountable.
“In this case, our Safety team has suspended this Host and removed this listing from our platform while we thoroughly investigate this report. We are also providing support to our guest, including a full refund.”
It’s far from the first time an unsuspecting guest has discovered cameras at a rental property.
In 2019, an Irish family discovered eight
hidden cameras at an Airbnb property in Greece.
Paul and Harriet Conroy, along with their two sons Aaron and Paul Jnr and a friend, had rented the accommodation through Airbnb for a relative’s wedding.
They found the devices “in every room” of the Athens villa, including the bathroom.
Airbnb suspended the owner’s account in response and refunded the Conroys for their stay.
“We take privacy issues extremely seriously. As soon as we were made aware, we removed this host from our platform and fully refunded the guests,” a spokesman said at the time.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/woman-shocked-discover-over-10-102040626.html
Why You Should Start Screening For Hidden Spy Cameras When You Travel
www.forbes.com
Reports of spycams in hotel rooms and vacation rentals are on the rise.
Getty
Are you afraid that hidden cameras might be spying on you when you travel? In 2020, the concern over spycams in hotels and vacation rentals can no longer be dismissed as far-fetched.
Throughout 2019, a drumbeat of news stories revealed an emerging trend, as one traveler after another discovered hidden cameras in their accommodations.
Typically, these covert devices were cleverly embedded in innocuous-looking items such as smoke detectors, alarm clocks, phone chargers and even shampoo bottles and deodorant sticks. In the past year, just a few of the places spycams were discovered include a
Sydney hostel, a
Miami Airbnb, and hotels from
Tehri, India to
Cape Cod, Massachusetts and from
Zhengzhou, China to
San Francisco and
Minneapolis. In South Korea, a crime ring was busted after secretly filming and
live-streaming the actions of over 1,600 motel guests.
Innovation and accessibility are driving the explosion of spycams, says Randy Andrews, a video security camera expert and the founder of Logan Security Consulting, which makes the popular
Hidden Camera Detector app for the iPhone. “The technology has gotten much, much smaller,” says Andrews. “We’re talking about a micro camera lens the size of a pinhead.”
The smallest hidden camera Andrews has ever seen was embedded inside the cross of a Phillips-screw head. “To the naked eye, it just blends in and is not visible at all,” he says.
For many travelers, the most worrisome trend is the proliferation of hidden cameras in the United States. “In the beginning, these cameras came out of China and we saw them sold on Chinese websites like Alibaba. Now, of course, Amazon and eBay blatantly sell them,” says Andrews.
Indeed, a quick search for “hidden spy cameras” on Amazon.com reveals thousands of everyday items sold with embedded micro cameras. Most of these products are priced under $100; for example, there’s a
USB wall charger for $28.87, a
smoke detector for $58.99 and a
digital alarm clock for $76.99. Each item is designed to be inconspicuous, like the
hardover book for $49.99 or
photo frame for $99.99 that would look perfectly harmless sitting on a fireplace mantel or in a bookcase inside a vacation rental or hotel suite.
Another reason for the spread of spycams is that they have become so easy to use. “Back in the old days, even four years ago, if you had a security camera and wanted to view the video online, you had to do complex firewall administration,” says Andrews. Today, the latest spycams will run on a Wi-Fi network and reach out to cloud-based servers. “They're not only recording on board the device, where you have to go and retrieve an SD card to get the video. They're also connecting to wireless. And they all have simple, do-it-yourself set-ups. Anyone can do it.”
Hidden Cameras in the United States
Hiding cameras in hotel rooms is illegal in the United States. “Hotels do not put any sort of surveillance in guestrooms,” says Andrews. “If there's a hidden camera in your hotel room, the hotel didn’t put it there.” The potential threat comes from individual bad actors — hotel employees, contractors or guests — who may have access to the room.
Clearly, the recent uptick of spycams in the news is making travelers jumpy. Nearly six in 10 (58%) Airbnb guests are worried about hidden cameras in vacation rentals, according to a
survey by property investment firm IPX1031 of over 2,000 Airbnb guests. The same poll found that one in 10 guests (11%) had found hidden cameras in an Airbnb rental.
Generally speaking, it's legal in the United States to use hidden cameras to record surveillance video in your home, but covert surveillance in a rental property is a violation of most vacation rental companies’ policies. For example, Airbnb’s policy specifically
prohibits hidden cameras. Hosts may install non-covert security cameras and other recording devices in the common areas of the home, as long as the devices are disclosed to renters. Under no circumstances is any type of camera allowed in any bedrooms or bathrooms.
Still, violations happen, and Andrews says his company receives multiple reports from travelers per week. “We recently had someone reach out to us after our app detected a hidden camera in the living room of their Airbnb,” says Andrews. “The host claimed that it wasn’t a camera but just a motion sensor. The renter was still suspicious and sent us a photo of the device. We were able to show him how to log in to the camera and prove that it was streaming video.”
How to Find a Hidden Camera
With the rapid increase in the number of hidden cameras has come a slew of ways to protect your privacy, including a large number of detection apps. Launched several years ago, the
Hidden Camera Detector app has received a surge in downloads over the past six months and now boasts over half a million users, according to Andrews. The iPhone app is free to try for three days and then has a $3.99-a-month subscription.
Using the camera and flashlight on your smartphone, Hidden Camera Detector can help detect the pinhole lens of a spycam in a room. It will also scan for suspicious devices on Wi-Fi, local networks and Bluetooth. “Spy cameras act differently on a network than standard security cameras,” explains Andrews. “Our app is able to distinguish a covert camera on the network based on where it’s reaching out to on the cloud.”
“We make it really simple,” says Andrews. “There's a red box, a yellow box, and a green box. Red means that there’s a high probability that this is a spy camera. Yellow identifies non-covert devices that can be accessed from the internet; that might include a Nest camera or a similar standard security camera. And green just tells you what else is connected to your Wi-Fi network.”
Even if you don’t have an app, it always pays to be smart about your surroundings. “If I walk into a hotel room, I'm going to look at the alarm clock,” says Andrews. “I want to see how it's positioned. Is it pointing at the bed? I would just pick it up, turn it over and look at it. You would know it was a camera if it had an SD card slot, like a digital camera.” Next, Andrews would examine the smoke detector to see if there was a tiny black dot — the telltale sign of a camera lens.
“Lastly, pay attention to items that seem out of place,” advises Andrews. “Hotel housekeepers are specifically instructed to sweep rooms for items left behind by previous guests. If a phone charger was left plugged into the wall in a bathroom, the cleaning crew would have pulled that out. So you want to be really careful of any electronics, phone chargers, that kind of thing. If there’s a USB wall charger plugged in, it’s not supposed to be there.”
“You don’t have to be afraid or overly paranoid,” says Andrews. “Just be a little more aware of what's around you.”
