Hidden cameras found in Ziroom rentals! Learn a few tricks to find hidden cameras

On October 14, the news of pinhole cameras being found in Ziroom rental houses was exposed, sparking heated discussions.

A young couple who had rented a Ziroom room in Chaoyang District, Beijing for nearly half a year accidentally discovered a pinhole camera on the socket next to the bed! On the morning of the 15th, an article titled "Secret Camera in Ziroom Room" on the public account "Yoyo Luming" sparked heated discussion. The reporter learned from the Chaoyang Branch of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau that this incident did happen, and the police are currently conducting further investigations.

Renting a "Ziroom" room, the camera is installed next to the bed

The article said that one of his friends had been living in Beijing for many years and started looking for a house to rent on Ziroom in April this year. The "optimized room" he rented was located in a community in Chaoyang District, Beijing. It was a partitioned room converted from a living room. The monthly rent was 3,290 yuan, and the rental period started on April 6, 2018 and ended on April 5, 2019. The couple who had just moved into the room thought everything was fine, but on the night of September 11, the couple suddenly found a strange small hole on the socket next to the bed. When they used the flashlight of their mobile phone to illuminate it, they found a reflective object similar to glass. The couple immediately thought of the hotel camera circulated on the Internet, so they first covered the hole with a sticker and called 110 the next morning. When the police arrived, they disassembled the socket and found a hidden hidden camera. There was a 16G memory card on the device, which could record continuously. The device could connect to Wi-Fi to remotely log in and download the videos recorded in the memory card. The Wi-Fi connected to the hidden camera was exactly the Wi-Fi provided by Ziroom agency.

The police then called the Ziroom housekeeper to the scene and took them back to the police station for investigation. The police used a card reader to check the video content, which showed the daily life scenes of the tenant and his wife.

Police investigating hidden camera at the scene

At present, more than a month has passed since the incident, but the exact investigation results have not yet been received. While waiting, the couple is more worried about whether their private life of more than five months has been leaked. With trepidation, the couple contacted a director of Ziroom a week after the incident, but the director said that the incident had nothing to do with Ziroom and "did not take any responsibility."

The police confirmed that this incident did happen, but the video flow is difficult to check

This morning, the reporter contacted the "yoyoluming's friend Xiao C" mentioned in the article - Mr. Liu, the person involved. He told the reporter that the article posted on the official account was completely true, and the house was located near Dayangfang. After the incident, he was worried every day whether his privacy would be leaked online, but he would still live in this house until the matter was properly resolved.

Since the Chaoyang Public Security Bureau Olympic Village Division filed a case on September 12, Mr. Liu has been to the police station several times. After learning that the camera has an Internet connection function, Mr. Liu hopes that the Internet monitoring department will check the camera's server to destroy the uploaded private videos and find the suspect. However, the police officer who accepted the case told him that the hidden camera equipment involves a remote server, and its operating mechanism is still unclear. The location of the remote end and where the video is uploaded are not easy to check. In addition, there are a large number of such pinhole cameras for sale online, and there are many camera brands, making it difficult to find.

After searching online, the reporter found that there were indeed a large number of pinhole cameras for sale, and most of the cameras had Wi-Fi connection capabilities, allowing real-time monitoring on mobile phones, and some cameras had night vision capabilities.

Mr. Liu said that Ziroom, as a well-known rental platform, should have conducted a comprehensive inspection before renting out a room to ensure the safety of the tenants, but the company's director claimed that he had no responsibility for the incident, which made him very angry. He will hold the matter accountable to the end to prevent more people from being harmed.

This morning, the reporter interviewed Tian Nannan, the public relations manager of Ziroom, who is related to the incident. She told the reporter that after the incident, Ziroom attached great importance to it and fully cooperated with the police investigation in order to restore the truth as soon as possible. In addition, Ziroom also proposed a plan to help the tenant move to another room. In addition, Ziroom found during the investigation that the internal circuit construction configuration of the room where Mr. Liu lived was inconsistent with Ziroom's room standards.

Regarding Ziroom’s previous statement that it would not take responsibility, the person in charge of Ziroom said that they would verify the matter.

Mr. Liu also suggested to the police that he report the case to the Internet police for investigation, but he did not receive a clear response. The Chaoyang police said that they are currently conducting further investigation and are unable to disclose the specific details.

"Traditional methods" to find hidden cameras in guest rooms

In some places (such as hotels and restrooms), bad guys sometimes use hidden cameras to spy and monitor. And these cameras are often difficult to detect, which is really troubling. Is it true that James Bond's camera detection "artifact" in the 007 movie really only exists in the movie? The following editor summarizes several detection methods for you to choose.

One method is to detect electromagnetic fields through smartphone hardware. You can install a mobile app to detect areas you think are suspicious. If a strong magnetic field is detected, then it is certain that there is a hidden camera in the area. This is to detect the radio frequency of the camera circuit leakage and the transmission of wireless signals, which belongs to the radio detection method.

Another method is to detect it through the light emitted by the mobile phone camera. Any camera needs to collect visible light to form an image, so the first thing to start with is the lens. All lenses can reflect light very well, and the reflected light is very distinctive. The first is that even if the environment is white light, the reflection will be colorful (the refractive index of glass for different colors of light is different), and the second is that the lens is a convex lens, and the reflection point is much smaller than the incident light.

Although this method is not very reliable, it can still play a certain role, mainly by taking advantage of the special reflection of the fisheye lens. The specific search method is also very simple, that is, take a flashlight and shine it at each small hole that looks like a hidden camera, and then observe the reflected light. The best practice is to shine the flashlight at the front camera of a laptop or mobile phone, shake the flashlight back and forth, if you can see this small point of color reflection, and the reflection point when shaking the flashlight, you have entered the door. This is the reflection of the lens of a normal camera:

This is the reflection of the laptop camera. There are two reflective points in the red circle, yellow and blue respectively. Ordinary small holes either do not reflect light, or reflect all at once, and there will not be such bright spots.

If you usually put your mobile phone around the computer speakers, when a call comes in, the speakers will make a buzzing sound, based on this phenomenon. You can take a mobile phone that has called a phone number and detect it in the area that you think is suspicious. If there is a suspicious device, the phone will also make a buzzing sound. Of course, this is not suitable for all situations.

For Apple smartphone users, the $4.99 Hidden Camera Detector app is a good choice.

Or use the flashing light detection method to detect hidden cameras. For example, it has been reported before that in the room, you can turn off the lights, then turn on the phone to take a photo, without turning on the flash, and walk the phone around the room. If you find a red dot, it means there is a camera. This method mainly depends on whether the camera has an infrared fill light. In some specific cases, if there is a problem with the phone, you can also use a toilet paper tube and a flashlight, just like using a monocular, and use the same method for detection. But few cameras that do this kind of thing actively emit infrared rays, which would be too easy to be exposed.

More professional detection methods

Of course, professionals will not be so inefficient. There are many detectors on the market that use the same principle. In fact, they are all lens detectors. There is a circle of LED lights around it, and a reflective detection sensor in the middle.

The breakthrough is the image sensor (CCD/CMOS). There is nothing wrong with them, but these sensors generally need a crystal oscillator to generate a clock to scan the image pixel by pixel (field clock) and line by line (row clock). The generators of these clocks will leak electromagnetic waves with a relatively fixed frequency. The row clock is generally between 12MHz and 30MHz, and the field clock is generally between 15.625kHz (PAL) and 15.750kHz (NTSC). The former can be detected on the shortwave band with a multi-band radio. If there is no electromagnetic shielding camera, the clock signal can be heard at about half a meter;

the latter can be purchased with a very cheap ultra-low frequency VLF receiver , which is not difficult to make by yourself. In addition: now there are high-resolution cameras, so the clock frequency will also change slightly.

Another breakthrough is that the internal power consumers such as image sensors/DSP/MCU will generate heat. Since image processing consumes more computing resources, the heat dissipation of all these devices will eventually be exposed. However, this detection requires a thermal imager . And sometimes the camera is deployed inside the appliance, so this detection method will not work.

Another breakthrough is the power supply . Since hidden cameras need to work for a long time, they are generally not powered by batteries. Therefore, the power supply is an indispensable part of the camera. This limits the camera to generally need to pull a power cord to a hidden place, or install it in an electrical appliance. The former can be found with wires/metal detectors suitable for general construction projects ;

The last breakthrough is the communication outlet . No one only puts a camera without collecting video. Therefore, the video must have a wired or wireless outlet. For some cameras that transmit data via Wi-Fi, it is mainly to see whether there is its Wi-Fi signal around, and the Wi-Fi signal can be checked in the mobile phone function. If you have special needs, you can buy a $130 radio frequency signal detection device, such as the Wired & Wireless Camera Detector, which can read traditional wireless signals. If there are furniture and electrical appliances that send radio in abnormal frequency bands, there is a problem in nine out of ten cases. Wired outlets are generally laid together with power cords, and the above-mentioned wire detectors are also applicable. Some cameras will use local storage cards, so there must be traces of frequent tampering, and the sneak photographer will often show up.

After discovering a hidden camera, if you take immediate action, it may alert the attacker. If you are determined not to let the attacker continue to monitor you, what should you do? You can use masking tape or adhesive to cover the camera, or walk out of the camera's surveillance range and continue to do what you want to do. However, this approach is sometimes not so good. If you are dealing with a camera hidden in a high place, such as hidden in a lamp or a smoke detector, it is obviously difficult to stay away from the surveillance range and continue to do what you want to do.

If you find it, call the police immediately!