But Vest alleges that Airbnb made several missteps in the run-up to, and subsequent investigation of, his stay with Ralph. The company refunded Vest’s money, paid for a hotel room for the night, and eventually removed the host from the site. But he managed to leave the apartment without incident, get in his car, and make two phone calls-one to his wife, and one to Airbnb’s safety team. “I know what he had stake by being caught,” Vest said. Vest was afraid of what might happen if Ralph saw him leave.
#Hidden spy cam in hotel on family vacation trip full
Anybody could have been watching.” (The company denied The Atlantic’s, and Vest’s, requests for Ralph’s full name and identity, citing its privacy policy.) “What I’ve found since is that record to a memory card, but they can also stream live. “I didn’t know if I was being watched live,” Vest told me in January. What’s more, his host could have been watching as he discovered the cameras. Then panic set in: It was almost midnight, and he was alone in the home of someone whose name he didn’t even know, apparently being recorded. He quickly got dressed, grabbed his belongings, and pocketed the cameras’ memory cards as evidence. But when Vest got closer, he realized they were cameras, and they were recording.
From afar, they looked like phone chargers. Two small, black, rectangular boxes were stacked next to an outlet on the far side of the guest room, both facing the bed. At about 8 or 9 p.m., he went out for dinner by the time he got home, his hosts had gone to bed in the room adjacent to his, and he prepared to do the same. So Vest, a children’s-camp director from Gainesville, Florida, didn’t think much of the discrepancy and settled into the two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment he’d be sharing with Ralph-or was it Ray?-and his girlfriend for the next five days. But his host had a great rating on the home-sharing site, and many of the comments mentioned how friendly and accommodating he was. This was the first and only indication that something was wrong. When Max Vest shook hands with the host of his Miami Airbnb back in January, the man introduced himself as Ralph-even though “Ray” was the name he’d used in all their prior communication.
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