This is a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong in modern technological society. Most Airbnbs have occupancy rules that bar any daytime visitors if read strictly. This has been normalized under the understanding that the policy isn’t strictly enforceable, but exists as a backstop for situations where extra visitors cause damage/nuisances.
So if you want to have a (perhaps spontaneous) guest over or a small polite gathering, as long as you don't cause a disturbance, it's no harm no foul. This is beneficial to the social fabric and doesn't bring any detriment to the host or neighbors. Yet, thanks to the marvels of technology, we can now detect and deter these aberrances that would have otherwise gone unnoticed!
On the other hand, you could argue that the reason they have a “no daytime visitors” rule in the first place is because they have no way of knowing how manhunt visitors there are so they just make the rule “none” so they don’t have to try to provide how many were there at once.
If you could accurately know how many people there are and when they are there, you could have a more reasonable rule like “no more than 3 guests during the day and they have to leave by 9pm” or something.
I think you're being disingenuous in that you're only looking at half the story. I don't use AirBnB either as a host or a guest, so I may be missing something here, but to me, this seems to fall squarely into "this is why we can't have nice things" territory.
Of course, if you have someone over for coffee, there probably is no issue. Of course, if you have many people over for a crazy party, there will probably be a boatload of issues.
The problem is there are plenty of dishonest people who'll try to skirt their responsibilities in the in-between situations. Maybe it's difficult to hide that you've had 50 people over. But if you're renting for, say, 4 people and you have 10 more people over? I'd guess it's not directly evident. So if those people aren't hell-bent on thrashing the place, but you know, shit happens? Perhaps the guest will try to say that the couch already had a wine stain, or the dishes were already chipped, or whatever. And if a neighbor complained about the noise? There were just four of us, we kept it reasonable, but we can't be completely mute.
So of course hosts will try to hedge against these behaviors. And, of course, people trying to be reasonable will get the short straw. Next thing you know, water will be found to be wet or something crazy like that.
There are, unfortunately, a lot of listings on airbnb/vrbo/etc. that just shouldn't be. Not because the listings are bad, but because the people are looking to make a buck with the least amount of effort or care as possible. Technologies like this arise when there are too many of that category in a market.
Short-term rentals really need to be taxed accordingly to compensate for the cost of their externalities (loss of single-family houses in the market). I'm not sure how many localities do this.
100%. In less than a decade this so-called innovation went from "I want to host travelers in my spare bedroom to help make rent" to "I want to buy up homes in popular areas during a housing crunch and pimp them out to frat parties". I have lived next to a property by one of these "superhosts" and it's hell on the neighborhood.
STRs are a disgusting and tasteless business and I avoid staying in them at all costs
I wonder how Airbnb would respond to a host complaint that uses this data, because of the following story:
A few years ago me and a bunch of friends rented a big Airbnb with a no dogs policy. Some other friends were in the same town, with a dog, and came over and hung out in the yard for a while with their dog. The dog also briefly went in the house (which I think is poor form, to be clear). Somehow the Airbnb host was in the neighborhood and drove by the house to check on it, saw the dog, and then messaged Airbnb to complain.
My friend counter-complained to Airbnb that the host was surveilling us. And the end result was that Airbnb discounted the Airbnb by 50% (over $1000). The owner got nothing out of it. Very surprising to me.
>> How does Crowd Detect estimate occupancy?
>> It detects the number of nearby iOS devices in a property and compares it to your defined threshold. If the count is exceeded, Minut sends an alert.
Either that or some ESP32. It also includes a smart smoke alarm and noise meter. But property managers aren't going to want to roll their own solution to this.
Five bucks says it's just an ESP32 with some sensors wired up to it going to "their" cloud. That's all they all end up being, just in a fancy package buttoned up for the end user.
I ripped apart a https://restsensor.com/ "hotel air quality sensor" I got on eBay and it ended up being just that: an ESP32 hooked to a Sensiron SEN55.
Interesting that it can only count iOS devices considering Apple is more privacy focused. What's the secret sauce that prevents Android phones being counted in the same way?
I would have thought Android's constant Wi-Fi scanning that Google uses for improving their indoor location services would be an easy give away.
I'd assume it's because it's easier to look for an Apple MAC prefix than trying to figure out if some other device is a phone or not.
But with MAC randomization (both wifi and Bluetooth), I'm not sure what they are doing here that would effectively sort iPhones from other devices doing the same.
All the pictures show nice, large houses in a suburb. What about apartments in a bigger building? Will the neighbor's visitors trigger this? Would turning off BT completely bypass this?
Absolutely, maybe 15 years ago, and it was / is used by shops to detect recurring visitors and get a better understanding of their behavior.
It’s also why anonymization of wifi started being pushed by Apple et al, which still does provide a stable client id but that’s only being broadcast as part of the DHCP handshake, which cannot be used here.
There's also much more recent research where you can actually track the position of people by the changes to the Wifi signal. Passive monitoring only, no device involved. See https://github.com/Saad-Imtiaz/WiFi-Sense for example (first thing I found by looking up now, never tried myself).
You could look for Bluetooth MACs instead but those too are randomized. Are any other vendors randomizing Bluetooth MACs? Maybe that's what they detect, MACs that don't go to any known vendor.
I'm guessing it's because iPhones are easier to characterize over dozens of different android MAC address prefixes.
But with MAC address randomization, I don't recall Apple doing anything different than other vendors so not sure what they are detecting that an Android wouldn't reveal as well.
Yeah that makes more sense than wifi or Bluetooth. It's probably more of a guarantee than a hard limit on only detecting iPhones. The list of devices with UWB support show all iPhone models since the 11 (except e models) but for Android, it's mostly just the pro/plus/ultra versions of the flagships.
So if you want to have a (perhaps spontaneous) guest over or a small polite gathering, as long as you don't cause a disturbance, it's no harm no foul. This is beneficial to the social fabric and doesn't bring any detriment to the host or neighbors. Yet, thanks to the marvels of technology, we can now detect and deter these aberrances that would have otherwise gone unnoticed!
If you could accurately know how many people there are and when they are there, you could have a more reasonable rule like “no more than 3 guests during the day and they have to leave by 9pm” or something.
Of course, if you have someone over for coffee, there probably is no issue. Of course, if you have many people over for a crazy party, there will probably be a boatload of issues.
The problem is there are plenty of dishonest people who'll try to skirt their responsibilities in the in-between situations. Maybe it's difficult to hide that you've had 50 people over. But if you're renting for, say, 4 people and you have 10 more people over? I'd guess it's not directly evident. So if those people aren't hell-bent on thrashing the place, but you know, shit happens? Perhaps the guest will try to say that the couch already had a wine stain, or the dishes were already chipped, or whatever. And if a neighbor complained about the noise? There were just four of us, we kept it reasonable, but we can't be completely mute.
So of course hosts will try to hedge against these behaviors. And, of course, people trying to be reasonable will get the short straw. Next thing you know, water will be found to be wet or something crazy like that.
STRs are a disgusting and tasteless business and I avoid staying in them at all costs
https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2026-09-02/concord-housing-auth...
A few years ago me and a bunch of friends rented a big Airbnb with a no dogs policy. Some other friends were in the same town, with a dog, and came over and hung out in the yard for a while with their dog. The dog also briefly went in the house (which I think is poor form, to be clear). Somehow the Airbnb host was in the neighborhood and drove by the house to check on it, saw the dog, and then messaged Airbnb to complain.
My friend counter-complained to Airbnb that the host was surveilling us. And the end result was that Airbnb discounted the Airbnb by 50% (over $1000). The owner got nothing out of it. Very surprising to me.
OK so Android users are safe, then. Woohoo!
e.g. if you suddenly start seeing tons of beacons above the historical maximum, that's a good indicator.
(Not trying to be "dropbox is just rsync", just commenting on the iOS only limitation)
This product allows them to charge additional fees without being present hosts or even receiving a complaint.
I ripped apart a https://restsensor.com/ "hotel air quality sensor" I got on eBay and it ended up being just that: an ESP32 hooked to a Sensiron SEN55.
I would have thought Android's constant Wi-Fi scanning that Google uses for improving their indoor location services would be an easy give away.
But with MAC randomization (both wifi and Bluetooth), I'm not sure what they are doing here that would effectively sort iPhones from other devices doing the same.
To anyone wanting to throw parties at an airbnb, switch to Android!
Thank god Android doesn't fuck my privacy like that.
I imagine that would be a neater solution. if all what you need is a wifi receiver.
It’s also why anonymization of wifi started being pushed by Apple et al, which still does provide a stable client id but that’s only being broadcast as part of the DHCP handshake, which cannot be used here.
But with MAC address randomization, I don't recall Apple doing anything different than other vendors so not sure what they are detecting that an Android wouldn't reveal as well.