illegal download

[Grace54]

Hi fellow hosts,

I am away on vacation so I rented out my place. And now I received a warning from my internet provider.

Apparently my guest had downloaded movie illegally using my internet. And that made me somehow liable for this. 

Has any of you experienced this before? Did Airbnb help you to settle the case? Share your stories please, I'm worried.

Here is the part of the warning:

We consider you a valued customer, so we wanted to let you know that if the content owner pursues this claim, or if there are additional claims, it could lead to legal action against you.  While none of your personal information has been shared with the content owner or any third party to date, in the future we may be required by law to release information about you and your account usage to third parties, including content owners, and to suspend or terminate your service.  We want to help you prevent this from happening.

[Helen3]

1. Do you have it in your guest rules that they shouldn't used the internet to download or watch illegal content?

2. Do you restrict internet access for guests

If not, you may have to pay any fine.

You can flag this with your guest through BnB (within 48 hours) do take it up in the resolution centre now.

[Jonathan6]

It is extreemly rare for a ISP to come after you for this.  It's automated and they will track it.  Unless you start to get into hundreds of d'l for copyrighted content, just ignore it.  There is no way for you as a host to police this unless you want to set up some terms in your house rules with a penalty to the guest if they do something like this, but that is going to be a headache to attempt to charge them afterwards.

Just file away the notice.  (BTW, I live in NY as well and have received a few of these over the years, mostly from my kids d'l copywrited music or a video).

[Vicky383]

Hi @Grace54 How did it go at the end? Though you did not download the movie personally, you are responsible for the activities on your network. Not so nice, right?

I have not experienced it myself but I take my home network security seriously. I am also happy to share how I protect myself by securing my home network. You can protect your Home Network from Illegal Downloading with a few steps. I recommend Set up Guest Networks and VPN for Airbnb as well.