Does your hotel or Airbnb come with a hidden camera?

For better or worse, home-rental services have revolutionised the way we travel. But expanded lodging options have meant that more travelers could fall prey to common criminal hustles — stemming from the fact that ordinary (and some deviant) people are opening up their homes to travelers. 

At the same time, surveillance technology has become increasingly accessible to anyone – and it’s now designed to be stealthier than ever. 

It’s a phenomenon once presumed to be a problem only for guests at seedy roadside motels, but users on the room-sharing platform have reported bizarre and frightening instances of discovering a hidden camera in their short-term rentals.

Do the Bs in Airbnb stand for Big Brother?

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Airbnb guests have recently reported frightening instances of finding a hidden camera in otherwise innocuous devices such as smoke alarms or clocks during their stays.

Things to check

One way to see if a device is a camera is to shine a bright light at it. If you hit a camera lens, it’s going to give a bluish reflection.

Seemingly innocuous devices such as fire alarms and alarm clocks can double as cameras. As an example, if you shine a light on a mirrored clock face it might reveal a tiny camera lens behind the screen on one side of the digital counter. If you shine a bright light at it, you can shine through the glass, and see there’s a camera there.

This technique can also work on two-way mirrors.

Even wall chargers for unrelated devices can serve as cameras, such as a USB-powered camera-clock with a tiny lens embedded in its power source. If you shine a light on it, you can see that little pinhole in the middle with the blue reflection — that is a camera lens!

To spot cameras with night-vision capabilities, look out for infrared LED lights on the device which are needed for the camera lens to see at night. While they can be difficult to find with the naked eye, peering through your Smartphone camera may reveal the LEDs more readily.

If you turn off the lights and use the front-facing phone camera, you can actually see these LEDs.

NOTE: A back-facing Smartphone camera won’t work due to its built-in red-eye filter.

These camera lenses are very small. They can be hidden in anything, even a hole in the wall. Check any suspicious devices or holes that are facing the shower, dressing area or bed.

Cameras and eavesdropping devices are much more prevalent these days, There used to be a select market, and you had to know someone to get hold of one. They’re much easier to purchase now — anyone can buy them off the shelf from Amazon or eBay!

Look in logical places; if someone was looking for information, they’d put a device in the lounge. If the person was a voyeur, they’d likely put a camera in the dressing down areas like the bathroom, shower room and bedroom.

Look out for two-way mirrors, too, with a “fingernail test.” If your finger can touch itself in the mirror, that’s a good indication it is doubling as a window. In a standard mirror, there will be a gap between your finger and the reflection. However, be advised that this method isn’t foolproof, and some mirrors with hidden cameras may appear to function as any other.