Hidden camera sweep devices

[bouncing]

Staying in Airbnbs, I'm starting to become concerned with the possibility of hidden cameras. I'm looking on Amazon for sweeping devices, but the reviews of the top couple of products look overwhelmingly fake.

Any recommendations? I'm not too price-sensitive, but I would like small and light to travel with.

[aedifica]

I have no experience with camera sweep devices (I'll be watching this thread with interest!) but are you familiar with Fakespot for checking reviews? https://www.fakespot.com/

[Flowerchild81]

They had one mounted to the wall in the living room of our last Home Away rental. I thought it was weird and an invasion of our privacy. I have definitely wondered about hidden ones and read a few air bnb horror stories. Will be following this thread.

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[anna2222]

following...

[bouncing]

I have no experience with camera sweep devices (I'll be watching this thread with interest!) but are you familiar with Fakespot for checking reviews? https://www.fakespot.com/

Haha. Some of them are so bad I didn't need analysis to spot them. I reported the obviously fake reviews to Amazon. Maybe they'll get removed?

[bouncing]

They had one mounted to the wall in the living room of our last Home Away rental. I thought it was weird and an invasion of our privacy. I have definitely wondered about hidden ones and read a few air bnb horror stories. Will be following this thread.

Sent from my SM-T813 using Tapatalk

Yikes. I'd report that -- even if it's not hidden it's supposed to be disclosed conspicuously at the time of booking.

[Muni_Jedi]

I'm not familiar with specialty scanning devices. however, most lenses will be reflective and identifiable when exposed to direct light. If you turn off lights and use a flashlight to slowly pan the room the cameras will normally be able to be found. Or at a minimum you can identify questionable areas for more thorough investigation.

[haraya]

I have no idea about sweep devices but I'd be interested to see recs.

I seem to recall reading somewhere about (1) turning out the lights and looking for lights in odd places; (2) taking a flashlight and panning it around the room to see if it catches the reflection off any hidden lenses. Low-tech, but still worth trying. (ETA: hah! Muni_Jedi posted the same suggestion whilst I was slowly typing.)

(True story: at one place where my kid has been taking (sport) classes for years, they caught a guy - fellow parent, in fact - leaving his backpack in the bathroom, with a hidden camera in it. Luckily an alert staffer spotted it right away, because (1) suspicious backpack, and (2) the camera had a red light. He was arrested and the police held a public hearing to address their findings. It seems they caught him before he amassed any footage.)

[AVService]

You can scan for WiFi and then get on the networks that you can and use a Net Analyzer or Stumbler as they are called.
You should be able to then see all wired and wireless devices on the network if you can join it at all.
There are also pretty simple tools that allow for getting on protected networks but I will not go into that here.

Anyone unskilled enough to use an accessible WiFi network likely will also not cloak the camera I bet?
I carry a WiFi Spectrum Analyzer that can detect and identify WiFi devices usually,not for this purpose but it would certainly work for this as well.

If the cameras are wireless then you may be able to access them directly and if they are connected to a DVR for recording you may be able to access that once discovered.

If the camera and system is an older hardwired system with no remote access then it will have to be that you see the lens really to rip it out or something sadly?

If you do find anything a flashlight should be able to mess one up pretty well if applied long enough straight to the sensor of the camera too.
A piece of opaque tape should do the trick too.

These are the first things that I would do.