To anyone wanting to throw parties at an airbnb, switch to Android!
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.
To me that says that the tech got good enough all those people got hired to make it production worthy behind closed doors.
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.
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.
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!
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.
And the hosts who want to use strict enforcement of rules that were designed around not being enforced unless something bad enough to notice had happened bear no blame?
Are they not just as dishonest?
What about the internet cheerleaders who validate such behavior with their "rules are rules" ignorance, as if things were that simple?
STRs are a disgusting and tasteless business and I avoid staying in them at all costs
Thank god Android doesn't fuck my privacy like that.
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.
Extremely poor form. Dog people seem to struggle with accepting these kinds of boundaries around their dogs for reasons I’ve never understood.
Although I don’t think the dog should have been in the yard, either. No dogs means no dogs. There can be liability/insurance reasons on top of just not wanting dog shit in your yard.
> My friend counter-complained to Airbnb that the host was surveilling us.
I can’t imagine being an Airbnb host with issues like this.
I’ve stayed in plenty of airbnbs where the owners lived nearby, and noticing a tenant breaking the rules when you drive by doesn’t sound like surveillance.
https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2026-09-02/concord-housing-auth...
I was thinking whether supermarkets or other entities might track who is shopping. Of course they can just use facial recognition at this point, but you could imagine them doing device level tracking, just like browser cookies track you as you wander the internet. But Apple cycles your MAC address, so maybe you can't correlate visitors across visits?
In general, circumventing this would require having your device go dark or intensionally pretend to be multiple devices simultaneously?
My point was that saying "it's only hosts" or, indeed, "it's only guests" is not fully honest.
Edit:
I think the underlying thing is hard to set out. Basically, it's "don't be a dick", and it applies to both hosts and guests. But how do you enforce that? So this devolves into a situation where everybody tries to pin the blame on the other, and / or make sure to cover their ass as much as possible.
Which brings me back to my general point: this is why we can't have nice things.
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.
People seem to be pretty universally incapable of not assuming computer products to be infallible, especially when they might get some extra money in "over occupancy" fees.
c-linkage•1h ago
varjag•56m ago
wildzzz•46m ago
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.
ale42•31m ago
wildzzz•24m ago