A few rules for those who do not want to be spied on by the owners of rented accommodation
Daily rent of a private apartment is always a “pig in a poke”. If with the hotel all the conditions are more or less clear, and a legal entity will be responsible for their violation, renting an apartment “from hands” from strangers can be a pleasant, cozy and cheap alternative, but it can also bring surprises. So, in the fall of 2019, Facebook began massively blocking private groups where landlords from among Airbnb service users exchanged personal information of guests – full names, passport details, correspondence. In extreme cases, it came to the publication of photos and videos of guests taken using hidden cameras.
Airbnb rules prohibit landlords from sharing personal information of tenants, but who knows about it, who will prove it, and what will it be? Installing a tiny camera and organizing uninterrupted video broadcasting to your laptop on the other side of the city is not difficult. For the independent struggle of guests with voyeurs, the main developer of SecurityScorecard, Alex Heid, created a small set of rules.
- At a rented apartment in your smartphone always enable VPNto protect private information from the landlord.
- Find in the apartment Wi-Fi router.
- Connect to Wi-Fi and run a special program on your smartphone that detects other devicesconnected to the same network as you. Heid recommends the Fing app for this.
- If the program has found suspicious devices or you are unable to install the application (for example, the phone is too old), simply turn off the router from the network (by unplugging it or simply pressing the power button) and wait.
An unscrupulous landlord at some point may call with the question: “Why did the router turn off, do you know?” Once, says Heid, he himself received SMS with similar content from the landlord almost immediately after he turned off the router. If there are no angry, upset calls, most likely, everything is in order with housing.
Remote Wi-Fi connectivity, Heid says, may be needed by a landlord for quite noble purposes, such as a fire safety system or burglary protection. “But turning off the router is a good tool to provoke the owner into a dialogue, if he, of course, notices,” Haid is sure.
In turn, experts interviewed by CNN presented their list of the simplest security rules.
- Primary inspection of the premises: Shiny objects, holes in the wall, book spines, plant pots and mirrors should be examined.
- Next, pay attention to gadgets – alarm clocks, wall clocks. In the spring of 2019, a scandal erupted in Ireland when a large family of tourists from New Zealand discovered a camera on the ceiling, disguised as a fire alarm.
- In the dark, you can examine suspicious places with the phone’s flashlight on – camera lens will give a clear reflection.
Such a “manual” check is also useful because the owners can give you the password for the guest Wi-Fi, and use their own – then no scanning through the Fing application will help to find out the problem. The same is true for the situation if a camera is used without the Internet, which simply lies and records everything in a row on a memory card. Such a story happened in January 2019 in Miami, according to The Atlantic.
Airbnb advises in such cases to remain calm and not to make hasty steps – as did the guest from Miami, who pulled out a memory card and ran outside with it and the keys to the apartment. The police may qualify this as a theft. So the first thing contact support team Trust and Safety Airbnb.
Having studied the situation, the company’s employees can offer the victim a night in a hotel at the expense of the company. In any case, this is only an intermediary, but not the owner of the property. From the point of view of the state, you simply “stopped at a certain Sasha” and manipulated his property. Therefore, if an independent search for cameras has led to a conflict, remember: you must carefully study the rules of servicebefore contacting the police.