While it's especially bad of a situation in South Korea, it has become a serious issue globally.

> The same poll found that one in 10 guests (11%) had found hidden cameras in an Airbnb rental.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2020/01/27...

That number seems absurd and speculative to fit a FUD narrative.

that kickstarter campaign is borderline a scam. They have an msrp of 400$ for a Chinese gadget you can by for <10$ online. And no, their LEDs are not special and you can source better ones from digikey for less than 1$.

It's not a "scam" if people buy it and it works. There is the cost to design such a thing. It's not free. The unit price was high. The rest are knock-offs who didn't have to pay for R&D.

Then you can make and sell your very own one using their effort.

the knockoffs were widely available online (ebay/amazon/aliepress/DX) for a decade before this kickstarter existed.

The kickstater itself is a cheap knockoff that didn't bring any new feature or any new design elements. I was too lazy to do the research, but it wouldn't surprise me if they just rebranded a product offered on alibaba.

  I would support them if they offered a superior design with a nice looking aluminum/Stainless/titanium case, made it more compact, or made it waterproof, etc.  but they did nothing like that. They are offering the same cheap back plastic design that looks 95% like all the other cheap chinese knockoff.

Borderline? You are being charitable.

it technically works as advertised, that's why I didn't want to call them a complete scam. an IR LED + red filter does work to detect hidden cameras.

Good question. We evaluated the "K18" hidden camera detector, and not the SpyFinder, but they use an identical principle.