An Airbnb "superhost" has been arrested and jailed after a guest discovered a camera hidden inside an internet router placed in the bedroom. The perv had picked on the wrong woman. Yunfei (her online alias) works in IT security and always checks hotel rooms that she stays in. She became immediately suspicious when she arrived …

A family staying at an Airbnb rental in Ireland made an unsettling discovery when they found their unit had a hidden camera livestreaming their stay. The Barker Family of Auckland New Zealand were staying at a property in Cork as part of an extended trip through Europe when they spotted a hidden camera in the living room of …

The NHS has been criticised over plans for an "Airbnb"-style scheme in which homeowners will be paid £1,000 a month to host patients in their spare rooms. Startup CareRooms is working with trusts and councils in Essex. Folks who sign up are asked to cook three microwave meals for their patient each day, provide them with …

An Airbnb host who cancelled a guest's booking at the last minute because she was Asian has been fined $5,000 and told to attend a course on Asian American studies. Tami Barker owns a mountain cabin in Big Bear, California, northeast of Los Angeles, and it was booked by law clerk Dyne Suh for a skiing weekend back in February …

The city of Vancouver, Canada, is pushing a set of reforms to hit back against a housing shortage it blames in part on Airbnb and Expedia. The Pacific coast city said it plans to require home and apartment building owners who rent out their residences on short-term rental websites – like Airbnb and Expedia – to cough up an …

CommentPerhaps it's time to retire the term "sharing economy" once and for all. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) this week swallowed up the "gig economy" trade group Sharing Economy UK. "Sharing economy" was initially used to describe individuals trading under-utilised private assets or labour informally, on a peer-to-peer …

The European Commission wants member countries to apply a light regulatory touch to “collaborative economy platforms” such as Uber and AirBnB and to ban as a last resort only. The Commission thinks the new gig economy suppliers can make an important contribution to jobs and growth, if - our italics - they are “encouraged and …

Uber, AirBnB, Taskrabbit and another 44 online businesses built around the "sharing economy" have written to the European Union urging politicians not to limit their development through new laws. In a letter [PDF] addressed to Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, currently president of the EU, the companies argue that they are " …

Self regulation can be a "more effective way" of addressing issues that arise in online markets than passing new legislation, Airbnb has said. In written evidence to a UK parliamentary committee which is looking into how the UK government can support the growth of the digital economy, Airbnb said self regulation can offer a …

Airbnb has confirmed it has raised a mega $1.5bn (£1bn) in funding, according to a filing the company placed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Back in July, The Wall Street Journal reported the funding round would value the company at $24bn (£15bn), meaning it will soon be worth more than actual hotel chain …

The Netherlands is the natural place for Uber to bill its Australian customers, Airbnb only lives in Ireland because it's got the best skills pool, and Bermuda is beloved of Chevron merely because it has a good maritime safety record. Those were some of the more amusing outcomes of yesterday's Australian Senate hearing into …

Lodge-listing website Airbnb suffered what appeared to be a fairly widespread outage in the early hours of Sunday morning. At time of publication, reports of downtime woes continued to trickle in. One Reg reader told us that Airbnb's servers had been down for hours. The company, which claims to have 1.5 million listings …

Fresh from sending the Uber question* to the European Court of Justice, it appears the city of Barcelona is now spoiling for a fight with another tech disruptor – this time lodgings lister Airbnb. Earlier this week, Airbnb announced it would be collecting tourist tax on behalf of its users in Paris from 1 October, and it …

Airbnb is shortly expected to unveil a valuation of $24bn (£15bn), meaning it will soon be worth more than actual hotel chain Marriott, according to reports. This month, Airbnb expects to close a $1bn (£628m) funding round at a $24bn valuation, "people familiar with the matter" have whispered to the Wall Street Journal. In …

ExclusiveThere is no evidence to support claims that London residents have been fined for using sites such as Airbnb, despite moves by the government to push through headline-grabbing "sharing economy" legislation, El Reg can reveal. Last month, the government announced it would introduce an amendment to allow London residents to use …

London residents will soon be able to enter the so-called "sharing economy", under changes to the law allowing them to use websites such as Airbnb without the fear of a £20,000 fine. In the rest of the country, residents are able to let out their homes for short periods. But in London, under Section 25 of the Greater London …

Google has inked deals with 40 third party app makers, allowing the ad giant to rifle through data from the likes of Lyft and Airbnb to serve up "relevant information" to its Android users. The firm said in a blog post on Friday that it would begin slurping the data from inside a number of apps for its Google Now service – a …

Yahoo! is close to a deal where it would invest $20m of its Alibaba pot in startup Snapchat, valuing the IM service at around $10bn, according to reports. The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times said that familiar people had told them that Yahoo! had started negotiations with the idea of investing up to $50m, but that …