Aired grievances

A dozen lawsuits later and it sounds like Airbnb has finally put the kibosh on indoor security cameras in its policies.

I’m not an aficionado of the rental properties lifestyle but I suppose I assumed that it was, at the very least, frowned upon beforehand to install security cameras indoors at places like this. Obviously, bathrooms and bedrooms were already a no-go but having a bunch of Norman Bates’ peeping on tenants while having a somewhat ambiguous policy on indoor surveillance was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Of course, while that’s strictly only for Airbnb rentals, I would venture you probably shouldn’t have cameras in the common areas of say, your private residence, either. That is, its pretty good advice providing you’re sufficiently…Wyze. I’ve been wanting to mention that one for a while, but we’ve been busy discussing other data breaches lately.

It’s been three weeks or so since the Wyze camera breach let roughly 13,000 customers peep through other Wyze owners’ cameras. If you’re feeling particularly forgiving on that point, I’d remind you that Wyze had another breach just five months prior to this one, and according to reporting from the New York Times (who pulled their recommendations for the company’s products) a study by Bitdefender found that Wyze had taken almost three years to patch security vulnerabilities affecting its cameras.

So, they’re not having a great time. It could be worse though; you could be Change Healthcare trying to get your claims payments system back online. Yeah, that’s still going on if you didn’t realize, and subsequently saw UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty summoned to the White House to discuss the hack with the administration.

As houses go, that’s probably not an Airbnb you want to be summoned to explain anything at.