How to detect a hidden surveillance camera in an Airbnb home?
Living nomadically, we change our accommodation very regularly and live year-round in Airbnb apartments (at least ten per year)
One of our psychoses is to come across an ill-intentioned landlord who has hidden cameras inside the house to keep an eye on us.
The risk is very low but not zero, some travelers had this bad surprise.
So I got into the habit of doing a little test when you arrive in a new home. This test is very far from guaranteeing the absence of cameras at 100% but it only takes a few seconds
The principle: scan the wifi network to identify the devices connected to it. Here is how to proceed:
- Step 1: Connect to the home’s Wifi network with your smartphone.
- Step 2: Launch the Fing application (available on Android and iOS) and run a network scan.
- Step 3: Understand which devices are connected. At least there must be your own device, there may be others: a television, speakers, a chromecast, a refrigerator, a game console, … The Fing application makes the work easier since it customizes the logo according to the currency if it can understand what it is about
- And as you can see in this example in a hotel in the United States: there are cameras that are connected to the Wifi network!
If Fing does not detect cameras, this is absolutely not a guarantee
- If the camera is connected to another Wifi network, he will not see it
- A camera can connect to a wired network, it will not be visible on the Wifi.
- There are cameras without an internet connection that record videos on SD card for future viewing, in this case they are invisible
What to do if you detect a camera?
In a hotel, it isn’t abnormal to detect cameras, there are very often cameras in the corridors, common areas or outside the building, nothing to worry about
If you detect some in a private hosting like Airbnb, it’s much more tendentious. Ask the owner for an explanation, he will have to be convincing. If not, contact Airbnb to explain the situation, ask for a refund and leave the accommodation as soon as possible
If you are a gambler..
Wifi cameras are sometimes very poorly secured..
FING shows you the model number, so it is very easy to find the address of the interface with a simple Google search
And in many cases, the camera owner did not take the time to change the default login and password
This was the case in this famous hotel in the United States, so I was able to observe the images from the live surveillance cameras
Fortunately, none of them were filming the inside of our room🙂 However, we can keep an eye on our rental car 😉
In this video, we show you how to check a hotel room, looking for bed chips, hidden cameras, fake mirrors etc.
