19 May 2020

It started with a complaint from an exasperated reader who declared himself sick of all the negative Airbnb and holiday letting stories we run on Flat Chat. But it’s not that this reader was in favour of unfettered holiday lets, far from it, but that people like us were faffing around, banging on about legislation and by-laws when he felt there were much more effective ways of stopping the problem, and doing so at the front door, literally. From our email exchanges, it emerged that there’s an ingenious means of preventing anyone you don’t want in your building from getting access. “Most owners believe they can’t do anything if holiday lets are legal but they all forget about a simple thing.” writes our reader. “We are entitled to know who is living in the building at any time, and we have security software organised by our building manager.” The answer, our reader says, is to include a biometric element like fingerprints in the key fob. Now, in the past that has led to complaints about privacy, specifically fingerprints stored on a central computer somewhere in the building or off-site in a security company’s offices, with no control over what happens to them. Computer says ‘no’. But what if the fingerprint pattern is stored INSIDE the key fob?  There is no central registry, therefore no broader privacy issue.

> Full article on Flat Chat
Jimmy Thomson