Virginia Airbnb guests found spy camera in shower

reason for separate bathrooms for drivers and employees

For me there's an easy way to avoid that:

Rent a room in a hotel. You get a few advantages in the process:

You don't really have to search for cameras in your room (and to the whataboutists that cram out some old story about the dodgy motel keeper who had cameras installed in guest rooms: How often did that happen compared to the shit that hosts pull off in Airbnb appartments?)

You don't have to tiptoe around other residents who understandibly hate your guts, because they don't appreciate an illegal hotel in their place of residence and all the shit that comes with it

Chances that you get ripped off by some less than honest host, or a whole ring of hosts working in concert, are much, much smaller

You don't get sudden cancelations on short notice

In better hotels you have a front desk, housekeeping and maintenance staff on call if things do go wrong

You're not breaking the law

You have, at least with larger chains, customer representatives, who actually deal with justified complaints and won't run into a "Eat shit, that's our final decision and we won't correspond with you about this issue anymore and if you insist we'll ban you from the platform" response (except when your issue blows up on social media and you get the usual pr lies from Airbnb and their ilk)

Oh, and prices for - if you're lucky - generically and cheaply decorated cookie cutter appartments managed by some faceless management company are really not that much cheaper, if at all, than the one for comparable hotel rooms. Espically in desirable locations.

Airbnb may have made sense in 2013. Nowadays I can just shake my head.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — A woman vacationing in a Virginia Beach Airbnb discovered a hidden camera above her in the shower, recently unsealed court documents show. More than five months later, the man who admitted to placing it hasn’t been charged.

The woman told officers she noticed a reflective black dot taped to the ceiling of the shower during the second day of her stay in July, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in Virginia Beach Circuit Court. When she and her friends investigated further, a small camera fell out, Virginia Beach officers wrote in the warrant.

A man who lives in the house told police he hid the camera and collected video of at least one of the women, the search warrant said. The device turned out to be a wireless, motion-detecting spy camera and directly above the bathroom ceiling was an attic with an entrance inside the man’s bedroom, according to the documents.

The investigation is still ongoing, a police spokeswoman told The Virginian-Pilot last week. Detectives are waiting for an analysis of items collected from the house to be completed.

The man still lives in the house and told the newspaper last week that the homeowner is out of the country. He told reporters police called him into the department, but nothing else happened.

If arrested, he could face an unlawful filming charge, according to the warrant. The misdemeanor is punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

A spokesman for Airbnb said the home has been removed from its listings.

(The answer has the word "liability" in it, eh?)