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Airbnb Competitor Checks IDs: 'We Don't Want to Trade Security for Volume'

265 points by citadrianne 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y ago
This should be their slogan. It minds me of Avis' old slogan "We try harder" (because we're second).
paisible 15y ago
There is no such thing as bad press, and AirBnB is only going to get more exposure and users from this. Case in point : Godaddy http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822946 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822946
- untog 15y ago
  Hardly a valid comparison. The CEO shooting an elephant has zero to do with the product GoDaddy offers, so there was no way that the negative PR would end up affecting perception of their actual product. The AirBnb fiasco is totally different- it's not the errant actions of a CEO (although they hardly helped), it's an exposure of danger in the core of AirBnb's product.
- xentronium 15y ago
  Of course there is. Case in point: Color. — My anecdotal evidence is loud — Mine is even louder!!!
- gyardley 15y ago
  Just because many people say "there's no such thing as bad press," that doesn't make it true. - former CEO of a startup that got some bad press
untog 15y ago
Expect to see a lot more of this. AirBnb are vulnerable right now, and in a very competitive marketplace. They really need to step up their efforts to contain the issue, or competitors are going to walk all over them.
- nanijoe 15y ago
  I for one expect AirBnB to come out winners after the dust settles. I don't see their competitors' names on the cover of FT, and the way human memory works, people will soon forget the negative reason why they originally heard of AirBnB. This of course supposes that the AirBnB guys handle the rest of this right.
  - paisible 15y ago
    Even if they don't, they'll come out stronger.
    - pseudonym 15y ago
      That is easily the silliest thing I've heard about this so far, and this is after reading AirBnB's PR statement. If they fuck this up, they won't "come out stronger", they'll come out with a sufficiently heavy PR backlash that people won't use them anymore. And that'll be that. As it stands now, the only thing people are hearing are negative things about AirBnB, and unless they take huge steps to fix that, there's going to be a lot of people who won't touch them with a 10 foot pole.
      - hugh3 15y ago
        I think we're over-estimating how big and widespread this story is, because it's all over the HN front page. Sure, plenty of people are going to hear about it and it's gonna be damaging for airbnb. But a whole lot of people aren't going to hear about it because they don't read HN or the Financial Times. It's bad for airbnb, but shouldn't be a killer. From my point of view, my only surprise is that it didn't happen sooner.
        untog 15y ago
        Yes, but it could yet get worse. With the (slow news) weekend coming up, if the tabloids ran out of fodder and decided to run with this story, it could get very big indeed.
mbreese 15y ago
Any of Airbnb's competitors are going to use this to their advantage. Rightfully so too... I didn't even know about Roomorama until this story. The biggest part of the story though was thrown in at the end: The harrowing story of the Airbnb user EJ prompted Ms. En Teo to reach out to her competitors in order to set a precedent for sharing information about sketchy users, so if she gets a report about misbehavior she can send an alert to get him or her banned from other sites. Incidents like this hurt the entire market as well as individual users, she said. Some kind of data sharing would be a great thing for this industry as they are all vulnerable to the same problems (theft, etc...).
- wccrawford 15y ago
  They have to be careful, though, as this kind of thing can be considered libel or slander if not 100% true, and collusion even if it is true. Having an industry-wide blacklist will almost definitely run afoul of the law.
  - ghshephard 15y ago
    Bars do this all the time in areas where there are problems - they scan your ID and then share the information with other bars, particularly if you get booted. In the United States, if you make a good faith claim about someone, it's pretty hard to win a libel suit, and, I suspect, it would be even harder to claim that grading an individual rises to the level of slander/libel, particularly if you provide a mechanism to challenge the claims. If this were not the cases, then credit rating agencies would have a difficult time existing.
    - gcb 15y ago
      the sites just have to remember to put that sign "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" and they are covered.
      - btilly 15y ago
        Put up that sign and then refuse service to blacks, and you're not fine. Put up that sign, implement the described policy, receive disproportionate numbers of complaints about blacks (because landlords are racist?), enforce the described policy equally irrespective of race, and you are walking a fine line. You could be sued for that and might not be fine.
almightygod 15y ago
When the major media picks up this whole rent-a-room-to-a-stranger-fiasco the bad guys will be AirBNB and the good guys will be the roomorama (and other competitors that capitalize on it)
- r00fus 15y ago
  No, when mass media picks it up, the hotel industry will be made to look like knights in shining armor... the hotel lobby is big and powerful and media is corrupt. AirBnB's fiasco is not a long-term benefit for their direct competitors either.
  - almightygod 15y ago
    I'm commenting more on the story the media will run then the end result. I agree that the end result will likely benefit lobbyists and hurt any consumer-to-consumer services. Is that bad though? If people don't trust this type of service, why do we act like thats a bad thing and hotels are evil for it?
  - Jun8 15y ago
    Spot on observation. So, it is idiotic for the competitors to hit on AirBnB, since that is the biggest company in their budding niche and if that falls, well, nothing will remain. They should all try to minimize the damage to their biz model. EDIT: Let me elaborate: Firms compete among themselves in a given field and all's fair in this competition. However, when the whole industry is threatened, you should gather forces, or else not to try to make your competitor look bad, because that will rub on you. Well-known example is the tobacco industry (their PR is relatively unified). If the consumer's trust in the whole industry is shaken (as in AirBnB) then it doesn't matter you are better than your competitors in this or that regard, people don't care.
    - r00fus 15y ago
      I think roomorama.com's idea to increase vetting is a good start (along with black-list sharing, as nasty as that sounds to me)... but it's only a start. It doesn't, for example, deal with stolen identity. A recently stolen card+ID would bypass all of those protections, and easily lead to a quick buck for meth-lab operations (which is what EJ's situation sounds like it was).
pbreit 15y ago
'We Don't Want to Trade Security for Volume' = 'we don't want to be successful'.
- mc32 15y ago
  Not necessarily. Whether or not that is a sincere claim, I think it's saying they are the antithesis of "by any means necessary", more like "we have a set of (conscientious) principles to guide us".
- kenjackson 15y ago
  Wrong. "We don't want to trade security for volume" == "Your screw up is our marketing" As someone else noted, I'd never heard of this company before, but now I have. Currently my only real impression is that they're NY focused and are security conscious. I think they'll take that introduction.
  - veyron 15y ago
    That's the wrong way of looking at the situation. For many observers, airbnb debacle is the first exposure they have to the online personal rental market. Roomarama is trying to remind people that the industry as a whole is not broken (it's airbnb being screwy, not the entire business model). And if they get positive marketing from it, c'est la vie. I would agree with that statement in a much more mature industry, but in this new area its easy for ill opinion of a firm to translate to ill opinion of the industry as a whole.
- pbreit 15y ago
  Why the downotes? Some further explanation I guess: Early at PayPal, we had lots of competitors making pronouncements like this and what they seemed to miss is that the actions they were complaining about were the very ones that made us successful.
almightygod 15y ago
Unfortunately as good as the intent is, a malicious user with devious intentions can simply forge an ID or use one of the many IDs they've already stolen from their unsuspecting AirBNB hosts.
- melvinmt 15y ago
  I believe the best solution for fraud is to require the user to take a webcam shot of yourself while holding the ID next to your head. I had to do that once to verify my identity.
  - mattw 15y ago
    The effort required to photoshop such an image (or paste your own picture on top of a stolen ID) is trivial compared to the effort required to forge or steal the ID in the first place. Thus, I don't understand how this would be anything other than an inconvenience to honest users.
    - a3camero 15y ago
      Requiring IDs like this might actually facilitate ID theft because criminals might create fake host listings and then request all sorts of information like this in order to steal identities. Much easier than breaking into houses to steal them.
    - a3camero 15y ago
      Requiring IDs like this might actually facilitate ID theft because criminals could create fake host listings and then request all sorts of information like this in order to steal identities. Much easier than breaking into houses to steal them.
      - ruchi 15y ago
        It's the roomorama service requesting proof not the users.
indiefan 15y ago
Meh. I'm sure when this is all over, AirBnb will have put some measures in place to add additional security (from a pr perspective at least). Really, nothing short of legitimate insurance is going to make using a service like this "safe" (id's are easy enough to steal/fake) and I'm sure that the people likely to use something like this (who were already ignoring the common sense dangers involved) are not going to be deterred by ej's story (she claims on her blog to have been the type of person to leap first and wait for a net to appear). In the end, many people who were never going to use AirBnB to begin with will feel more certain in their (probably wise) decision, and many new people who will be open to the idea will now have heard of it for the first time.
joelhooks 15y ago
I am a fairly frequent renter through these types of services (mostly use VRBO) because we have way too many kids and hotels are way too expensive. Nobody has /ever/ asked me for ID. "Key is in the lockbox, here is the code! Have fun!" is the typical greeting.
- Aloisius 15y ago
  I've been asked for an ID for both vacation rentals (through VRBO) and from most places overseas through AirBnB. Each time it was when there were some valuable items inside. In fact, every time I've gotten a place through AirBnB, the owner met me in person. Of course, I always rent higher priced places (I look for places nicer than a hotel for the same price).
dadkins 15y ago
Honest question: how is Airbnb or any of their competitors different than vacation rentals? You rent a house for a week when the owners aren't using it. Often the key's in a combo box or they mail it to you. The only real protection is a security deposit which you pay upfront. The concept has been around for ages.
- run4yourlives 15y ago
  They aren't, it's just a "smaller" scale using the internet. The business idea is proven, AirBnB is just leveraging technology to stake out a significant market share. Nothing wrong with this at all.
  - nupark2 15y ago
    No, it's quite different. Vacation properties are set up for that purpose, with insurance, limited on-site personal property, etc. There have been online vacation property rental sites for years. AirBNB, however, sells itself as a mechanism for making some extra cash on your own actual day-to-day residence.
    - run4yourlives 15y ago
      It doesn't really matter whether the property you are letting is your primary residence or not, really. What matters is that you aren't using it. AirBnB caters to shorter, less formal stays than a normal rental site. It also presents a much improved User experience. It also implies that you can get in on this game if you don't actually own the property, but whether or not you can legally do this is up to you to know, not AirBnb.
      - nupark2 15y ago
        It doesn't really matter whether the property you are letting is your primary residence or not, really. It matters in terms of security. If you're using the property, that either means that you have a considerable amount of personal information and valuables on-site, or that you'll have to take them off-site to secure them. If the property is a dedicated vacation home, then this will generally not be the case, and coupled with deposits, property insurance, etc, the risk to the owner is significantly reduced. Good luck getting property insurance on an apartment you sublet.
va_coder 15y ago
The victim is such a great writer Roomarama should hire her for copy and PR
cdp 15y ago
Is anyone else finding it interesting to see how a bootstrapped startup is implementing tighter security standards and accepts slower growth as a consequence while the startup du hour, fueled by massive amounts of other people's money, is pursuing growth at all cost and with little regard for the consumer? Reminds me a little of the YouTube founders who wanted to grow and be acquired as fast as possible and willingly accepted pirated content. I think this has nothing to do with Roomorama taking advantage of the situation for their own profit. If anything, these guys have every right to be pissed off that a careless competitor is tarnishing the whole industry.
- veyron 15y ago
  I wish I could upvote that comment multiple times. That's true in general. Bootstrapped startups, as a whole, are generally built to be long-standing real businesses, and they treat the business as such. You don't sink tons of your own money into an effort if you dont truly believe in the profitability of the business (profitability of the business, not potential valuation or perceived growth). Neither myself nor any of my friends who are bootstrapping their own firms pursue growth in favor of customer support, security or aggressive valuation.
- SemanticFog 15y ago
  They have every right to promote their differentiation. Speaking as someone who lives in a great part of Manhattan and is often out of town, I've never used AirBnb because I don't trust their verification. I will definitely look for a competitor that does more thorough screening, even if the volume and rental price is lower. It's worth it to me.
  - untog 15y ago
    There's a fine line, though. If the cost goes too high, why not just stay in a hotel? They have a specific budgetary window to aim for.
kevinpet 15y ago
There's no real security in the process described. If they stole a wallet with a credit card, they also have the ID. I'd categorize it as actually harmful because it gives more of an illusion of security. Couchsurfing apparently has someone capable of logical thinking on staff. The round trip of verifying an address adds real security.
- sprovoost 15y ago
  It helps, but it still wouldn't protect you from someone serious on bullying a host or the system.
cubix 15y ago
I'm surprised that scanning IDs is much of a deterrent. If would-be thieves are going to the trouble of booking rooms on AirBNB and the like, they are obviously more than casual criminals, and probably fairly technically adept ones at that. Taking the next logical step to Photoshop the image doesn't seem like much of an obstacle for someone so motivated.
- pak 15y ago
  Indeed, if Nigerian 419 scammers have already picked up photoshopping IDs [1], you can imagine what a low barrier this will be. The real question is if you can verify the ID electronically from the image, and the answer will generally be no. [1] http://www.419eater.com/html/hall_of_shame4.htm http://www.419eater.com/html/hall_of_shame4.htm
  - msg 15y ago
    You might be able to use Hany Farid's work on doctored photographs to show they've been tampered with. See, eg, this interesting transcript of his Nova appearance. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/hany-farid.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/hany-farid.html Steganography/image manipulation is an arms race but you'll keep the low end fake IDs out. At some point in the race master criminals are going to go for higher value targets than random apartments on AirBnB. And... problem solved.
iamelgringo 15y ago
Some friends of mine started http://Tripping.com http://Tripping.com, which isn't about room rentals, it's about meeting strangers while traveling globally. But, even since the beginning, their focus has been on security. I suspect that this is the advantage of having a female CEO / Founder. She grokked that as a potential problem from the very beginning. Jen O'Neil, is one of the most fantastic young CEO's I know. The whole team is simply amazing.
d0ne 15y ago
Something like http://www.trustcloud.com http://www.trustcloud.com could help in situations like these.
chailatte 15y ago
Another sign that AirBnb could care less about its customers. When first AirBnb heard about this, they could've a.) Choose to protect her and other users from future incidents b.) Hide and hope it goes away If they choose a, 5 weeks ago, they would've already either changed the business process, or blogged about it to their community to warn them of danger (heck, the perp hasn't been caught/IDed yet). But because nothing was done, the fact that they kept outputting PR responses, and offered no tangible amount/receipt/proof that they helped her, tells me that AirBnb is all about the $1 billion valuation. Nothing more.
- warpdude 15y ago
  Actually, someone has been arrested in connection with this case: http://allthingsd.com/20110729/airbnbs-rental-nightmare-ends-in-arrest-and-one-still-very-unlucky-renter/ http://allthingsd.com/20110729/airbnbs-rental-nightmare-ends...
tobylane 15y ago
In a country with widespread use of fake ids, this doesn't mean a lot. Once you're past 21, what do you do with the IDs? Keep them for younger friends or throw them away?
sentinel 15y ago
This whole air bnb story is blown out of proportions. Yea, when you open up your house for people you don't know, it can happen that you will get it trashed (honestly I am surprised this is the first time that it happened).
sentinel 15y ago
This whole air bnb story is blown out of proportions. Yea, when you open up your house for people you don't know, it can happen that you will get it trashed (honestly I am surprised this is the first time that it happened).
azov 15y ago
> "He made no inquiry into my current emotional state, my safety or my well being." Airbnb definitely screwed up here, but she just sounds like a professional victim. Lots of homes get burglarized every day. On a smaller scale, everyone probably had a car broken into at least once. Yes, it feels bad. Very bad. But it's not THAT BAD. Not on a scale when you expect someone to inquire about your "emotional state, safety, or well-being" a month after it happened. Airbnb's handling of this case is a big failure, but it's not fair to blame them for someone being so damn sensitive. Let's face it, she didn't do it out of sheer goodness of her heart. She did it for money. Letting strangers into your home does and always will involve some risk. If you're so vulnerable that you can't possibly take that risk - don't do it, period. It's simply not the right way for you to earn a quick buck.
ilamont 15y ago
Roomorama doesn't scale. You could try to crowdsource some of the vetting responsibilities, or appoint community members to "check IDs", but then you get into uncomfortable privacy issues.
driverdan 15y ago
As others have alluded to, it's trivial to photoshop an ID with different info and photo. You could use a stolen credit card and a modified ID to make a reservation. That said, I'm more concerned with "email a scanned photo ID". Are they seriously having users send scanned IDs through email? Email is completely insecure and should NEVER be used for sensitive information such as an ID. IDs should be treated in the same manner as credit cards. Would you ever ask a customer to email you scans of their credit card? You'd lose your merchant account faster than you can say law suit.

265 points by citadrianne 15y ago

This should be their slogan. It minds me of Avis' old slogan "We try harder" (because we're second).

There is no such thing as bad press, and AirBnB is only going to get more exposure and users from this. Case in point : Godaddy http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822946 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822946

untog 15y ago
Hardly a valid comparison. The CEO shooting an elephant has zero to do with the product GoDaddy offers, so there was no way that the negative PR would end up affecting perception of their actual product. The AirBnb fiasco is totally different- it's not the errant actions of a CEO (although they hardly helped), it's an exposure of danger in the core of AirBnb's product.
xentronium 15y ago
Of course there is. Case in point: Color. — My anecdotal evidence is loud — Mine is even louder!!!
gyardley 15y ago
Just because many people say "there's no such thing as bad press," that doesn't make it true. - former CEO of a startup that got some bad press

untog 15y ago

Expect to see a lot more of this. AirBnb are vulnerable right now, and in a very competitive marketplace. They really need to step up their efforts to contain the issue, or competitors are going to walk all over them.

nanijoe 15y ago
I for one expect AirBnB to come out winners after the dust settles. I don't see their competitors' names on the cover of FT, and the way human memory works, people will soon forget the negative reason why they originally heard of AirBnB. This of course supposes that the AirBnB guys handle the rest of this right.
- paisible 15y ago
  Even if they don't, they'll come out stronger.
  - pseudonym 15y ago
    That is easily the silliest thing I've heard about this so far, and this is after reading AirBnB's PR statement. If they fuck this up, they won't "come out stronger", they'll come out with a sufficiently heavy PR backlash that people won't use them anymore. And that'll be that. As it stands now, the only thing people are hearing are negative things about AirBnB, and unless they take huge steps to fix that, there's going to be a lot of people who won't touch them with a 10 foot pole.
    - hugh3 15y ago
      I think we're over-estimating how big and widespread this story is, because it's all over the HN front page. Sure, plenty of people are going to hear about it and it's gonna be damaging for airbnb. But a whole lot of people aren't going to hear about it because they don't read HN or the Financial Times. It's bad for airbnb, but shouldn't be a killer. From my point of view, my only surprise is that it didn't happen sooner.
      - untog 15y ago
        Yes, but it could yet get worse. With the (slow news) weekend coming up, if the tabloids ran out of fodder and decided to run with this story, it could get very big indeed.

mbreese 15y ago

Any of Airbnb's competitors are going to use this to their advantage. Rightfully so too... I didn't even know about Roomorama until this story. The biggest part of the story though was thrown in at the end: The harrowing story of the Airbnb user EJ prompted Ms. En Teo to reach out to her competitors in order to set a precedent for sharing information about sketchy users, so if she gets a report about misbehavior she can send an alert to get him or her banned from other sites. Incidents like this hurt the entire market as well as individual users, she said. Some kind of data sharing would be a great thing for this industry as they are all vulnerable to the same problems (theft, etc...).

wccrawford 15y ago
They have to be careful, though, as this kind of thing can be considered libel or slander if not 100% true, and collusion even if it is true. Having an industry-wide blacklist will almost definitely run afoul of the law.
- ghshephard 15y ago
  Bars do this all the time in areas where there are problems - they scan your ID and then share the information with other bars, particularly if you get booted. In the United States, if you make a good faith claim about someone, it's pretty hard to win a libel suit, and, I suspect, it would be even harder to claim that grading an individual rises to the level of slander/libel, particularly if you provide a mechanism to challenge the claims. If this were not the cases, then credit rating agencies would have a difficult time existing.
  - gcb 15y ago
    the sites just have to remember to put that sign "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" and they are covered.
    - btilly 15y ago
      Put up that sign and then refuse service to blacks, and you're not fine. Put up that sign, implement the described policy, receive disproportionate numbers of complaints about blacks (because landlords are racist?), enforce the described policy equally irrespective of race, and you are walking a fine line. You could be sued for that and might not be fine.

almightygod 15y ago

When the major media picks up this whole rent-a-room-to-a-stranger-fiasco the bad guys will be AirBNB and the good guys will be the roomorama (and other competitors that capitalize on it)

r00fus 15y ago
No, when mass media picks it up, the hotel industry will be made to look like knights in shining armor... the hotel lobby is big and powerful and media is corrupt. AirBnB's fiasco is not a long-term benefit for their direct competitors either.
- almightygod 15y ago
  I'm commenting more on the story the media will run then the end result. I agree that the end result will likely benefit lobbyists and hurt any consumer-to-consumer services. Is that bad though? If people don't trust this type of service, why do we act like thats a bad thing and hotels are evil for it?
- Jun8 15y ago
  Spot on observation. So, it is idiotic for the competitors to hit on AirBnB, since that is the biggest company in their budding niche and if that falls, well, nothing will remain. They should all try to minimize the damage to their biz model. EDIT: Let me elaborate: Firms compete among themselves in a given field and all's fair in this competition. However, when the whole industry is threatened, you should gather forces, or else not to try to make your competitor look bad, because that will rub on you. Well-known example is the tobacco industry (their PR is relatively unified). If the consumer's trust in the whole industry is shaken (as in AirBnB) then it doesn't matter you are better than your competitors in this or that regard, people don't care.
  - r00fus 15y ago
    I think roomorama.com's idea to increase vetting is a good start (along with black-list sharing, as nasty as that sounds to me)... but it's only a start. It doesn't, for example, deal with stolen identity. A recently stolen card+ID would bypass all of those protections, and easily lead to a quick buck for meth-lab operations (which is what EJ's situation sounds like it was).

pbreit 15y ago

'We Don't Want to Trade Security for Volume' = 'we don't want to be successful'.

mc32 15y ago
Not necessarily. Whether or not that is a sincere claim, I think it's saying they are the antithesis of "by any means necessary", more like "we have a set of (conscientious) principles to guide us".
kenjackson 15y ago
Wrong. "We don't want to trade security for volume" == "Your screw up is our marketing" As someone else noted, I'd never heard of this company before, but now I have. Currently my only real impression is that they're NY focused and are security conscious. I think they'll take that introduction.
- veyron 15y ago
  That's the wrong way of looking at the situation. For many observers, airbnb debacle is the first exposure they have to the online personal rental market. Roomarama is trying to remind people that the industry as a whole is not broken (it's airbnb being screwy, not the entire business model). And if they get positive marketing from it, c'est la vie. I would agree with that statement in a much more mature industry, but in this new area its easy for ill opinion of a firm to translate to ill opinion of the industry as a whole.
pbreit 15y ago
Why the downotes? Some further explanation I guess: Early at PayPal, we had lots of competitors making pronouncements like this and what they seemed to miss is that the actions they were complaining about were the very ones that made us successful.

almightygod 15y ago

Unfortunately as good as the intent is, a malicious user with devious intentions can simply forge an ID or use one of the many IDs they've already stolen from their unsuspecting AirBNB hosts.

melvinmt 15y ago
I believe the best solution for fraud is to require the user to take a webcam shot of yourself while holding the ID next to your head. I had to do that once to verify my identity.
- mattw 15y ago
  The effort required to photoshop such an image (or paste your own picture on top of a stolen ID) is trivial compared to the effort required to forge or steal the ID in the first place. Thus, I don't understand how this would be anything other than an inconvenience to honest users.
  - a3camero 15y ago
    Requiring IDs like this might actually facilitate ID theft because criminals might create fake host listings and then request all sorts of information like this in order to steal identities. Much easier than breaking into houses to steal them.
  - a3camero 15y ago
    Requiring IDs like this might actually facilitate ID theft because criminals could create fake host listings and then request all sorts of information like this in order to steal identities. Much easier than breaking into houses to steal them.
    - ruchi 15y ago
      It's the roomorama service requesting proof not the users.

indiefan 15y ago

Meh. I'm sure when this is all over, AirBnb will have put some measures in place to add additional security (from a pr perspective at least). Really, nothing short of legitimate insurance is going to make using a service like this "safe" (id's are easy enough to steal/fake) and I'm sure that the people likely to use something like this (who were already ignoring the common sense dangers involved) are not going to be deterred by ej's story (she claims on her blog to have been the type of person to leap first and wait for a net to appear). In the end, many people who were never going to use AirBnB to begin with will feel more certain in their (probably wise) decision, and many new people who will be open to the idea will now have heard of it for the first time.

joelhooks 15y ago

I am a fairly frequent renter through these types of services (mostly use VRBO) because we have way too many kids and hotels are way too expensive. Nobody has /ever/ asked me for ID. "Key is in the lockbox, here is the code! Have fun!" is the typical greeting.

Aloisius 15y ago
I've been asked for an ID for both vacation rentals (through VRBO) and from most places overseas through AirBnB. Each time it was when there were some valuable items inside. In fact, every time I've gotten a place through AirBnB, the owner met me in person. Of course, I always rent higher priced places (I look for places nicer than a hotel for the same price).

dadkins 15y ago

Honest question: how is Airbnb or any of their competitors different than vacation rentals? You rent a house for a week when the owners aren't using it. Often the key's in a combo box or they mail it to you. The only real protection is a security deposit which you pay upfront. The concept has been around for ages.

run4yourlives 15y ago
They aren't, it's just a "smaller" scale using the internet. The business idea is proven, AirBnB is just leveraging technology to stake out a significant market share. Nothing wrong with this at all.
- nupark2 15y ago
  No, it's quite different. Vacation properties are set up for that purpose, with insurance, limited on-site personal property, etc. There have been online vacation property rental sites for years. AirBNB, however, sells itself as a mechanism for making some extra cash on your own actual day-to-day residence.
  - run4yourlives 15y ago
    It doesn't really matter whether the property you are letting is your primary residence or not, really. What matters is that you aren't using it. AirBnB caters to shorter, less formal stays than a normal rental site. It also presents a much improved User experience. It also implies that you can get in on this game if you don't actually own the property, but whether or not you can legally do this is up to you to know, not AirBnb.
    - nupark2 15y ago
      It doesn't really matter whether the property you are letting is your primary residence or not, really. It matters in terms of security. If you're using the property, that either means that you have a considerable amount of personal information and valuables on-site, or that you'll have to take them off-site to secure them. If the property is a dedicated vacation home, then this will generally not be the case, and coupled with deposits, property insurance, etc, the risk to the owner is significantly reduced. Good luck getting property insurance on an apartment you sublet.

va_coder 15y ago

The victim is such a great writer Roomarama should hire her for copy and PR

cdp 15y ago

Is anyone else finding it interesting to see how a bootstrapped startup is implementing tighter security standards and accepts slower growth as a consequence while the startup du hour, fueled by massive amounts of other people's money, is pursuing growth at all cost and with little regard for the consumer? Reminds me a little of the YouTube founders who wanted to grow and be acquired as fast as possible and willingly accepted pirated content. I think this has nothing to do with Roomorama taking advantage of the situation for their own profit. If anything, these guys have every right to be pissed off that a careless competitor is tarnishing the whole industry.

veyron 15y ago
I wish I could upvote that comment multiple times. That's true in general. Bootstrapped startups, as a whole, are generally built to be long-standing real businesses, and they treat the business as such. You don't sink tons of your own money into an effort if you dont truly believe in the profitability of the business (profitability of the business, not potential valuation or perceived growth). Neither myself nor any of my friends who are bootstrapping their own firms pursue growth in favor of customer support, security or aggressive valuation.
SemanticFog 15y ago
They have every right to promote their differentiation. Speaking as someone who lives in a great part of Manhattan and is often out of town, I've never used AirBnb because I don't trust their verification. I will definitely look for a competitor that does more thorough screening, even if the volume and rental price is lower. It's worth it to me.
- untog 15y ago
  There's a fine line, though. If the cost goes too high, why not just stay in a hotel? They have a specific budgetary window to aim for.

kevinpet 15y ago

There's no real security in the process described. If they stole a wallet with a credit card, they also have the ID. I'd categorize it as actually harmful because it gives more of an illusion of security. Couchsurfing apparently has someone capable of logical thinking on staff. The round trip of verifying an address adds real security.

sprovoost 15y ago
It helps, but it still wouldn't protect you from someone serious on bullying a host or the system.

cubix 15y ago

I'm surprised that scanning IDs is much of a deterrent. If would-be thieves are going to the trouble of booking rooms on AirBNB and the like, they are obviously more than casual criminals, and probably fairly technically adept ones at that. Taking the next logical step to Photoshop the image doesn't seem like much of an obstacle for someone so motivated.

pak 15y ago
Indeed, if Nigerian 419 scammers have already picked up photoshopping IDs [1], you can imagine what a low barrier this will be. The real question is if you can verify the ID electronically from the image, and the answer will generally be no. [1] http://www.419eater.com/html/hall_of_shame4.htm http://www.419eater.com/html/hall_of_shame4.htm
- msg 15y ago
  You might be able to use Hany Farid's work on doctored photographs to show they've been tampered with. See, eg, this interesting transcript of his Nova appearance. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/hany-farid.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/hany-farid.html Steganography/image manipulation is an arms race but you'll keep the low end fake IDs out. At some point in the race master criminals are going to go for higher value targets than random apartments on AirBnB. And... problem solved.

iamelgringo 15y ago

Some friends of mine started http://Tripping.com http://Tripping.com, which isn't about room rentals, it's about meeting strangers while traveling globally. But, even since the beginning, their focus has been on security. I suspect that this is the advantage of having a female CEO / Founder. She grokked that as a potential problem from the very beginning. Jen O'Neil, is one of the most fantastic young CEO's I know. The whole team is simply amazing.

d0ne 15y ago

Something like http://www.trustcloud.com http://www.trustcloud.com could help in situations like these.

chailatte 15y ago

Another sign that AirBnb could care less about its customers. When first AirBnb heard about this, they could've a.) Choose to protect her and other users from future incidents b.) Hide and hope it goes away If they choose a, 5 weeks ago, they would've already either changed the business process, or blogged about it to their community to warn them of danger (heck, the perp hasn't been caught/IDed yet). But because nothing was done, the fact that they kept outputting PR responses, and offered no tangible amount/receipt/proof that they helped her, tells me that AirBnb is all about the $1 billion valuation. Nothing more.

warpdude 15y ago
Actually, someone has been arrested in connection with this case: http://allthingsd.com/20110729/airbnbs-rental-nightmare-ends-in-arrest-and-one-still-very-unlucky-renter/ http://allthingsd.com/20110729/airbnbs-rental-nightmare-ends...

tobylane 15y ago

In a country with widespread use of fake ids, this doesn't mean a lot. Once you're past 21, what do you do with the IDs? Keep them for younger friends or throw them away?

sentinel 15y ago

This whole air bnb story is blown out of proportions. Yea, when you open up your house for people you don't know, it can happen that you will get it trashed (honestly I am surprised this is the first time that it happened).

sentinel 15y ago

azov 15y ago

> "He made no inquiry into my current emotional state, my safety or my well being." Airbnb definitely screwed up here, but she just sounds like a professional victim. Lots of homes get burglarized every day. On a smaller scale, everyone probably had a car broken into at least once. Yes, it feels bad. Very bad. But it's not THAT BAD. Not on a scale when you expect someone to inquire about your "emotional state, safety, or well-being" a month after it happened. Airbnb's handling of this case is a big failure, but it's not fair to blame them for someone being so damn sensitive. Let's face it, she didn't do it out of sheer goodness of her heart. She did it for money. Letting strangers into your home does and always will involve some risk. If you're so vulnerable that you can't possibly take that risk - don't do it, period. It's simply not the right way for you to earn a quick buck.

ilamont 15y ago

Roomorama doesn't scale. You could try to crowdsource some of the vetting responsibilities, or appoint community members to "check IDs", but then you get into uncomfortable privacy issues.

driverdan 15y ago

As others have alluded to, it's trivial to photoshop an ID with different info and photo. You could use a stolen credit card and a modified ID to make a reservation. That said, I'm more concerned with "email a scanned photo ID". Are they seriously having users send scanned IDs through email? Email is completely insecure and should NEVER be used for sensitive information such as an ID. IDs should be treated in the same manner as credit cards. Would you ever ask a customer to email you scans of their credit card? You'd lose your merchant account faster than you can say law suit.