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

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.<p>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.

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.<p>The biggest part of the story though was thrown in at the end:<p><i>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.</i><p>Some kind of data sharing would be a great thing for this industry as they are all vulnerable to the same problems (theft, etc...).

Honest question: how is Airbnb or any of their competitors different than vacation rentals?<p>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.

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.

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.<p>Couchsurfing apparently has someone capable of logical thinking on staff. The round trip of verifying an address adds real security.

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).<p>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.

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.<p>Nobody has /ever/ asked me for ID. "Key is in the lockbox, here is the code! Have fun!" is the typical greeting.

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.

Some friends of mine started <a href="http://Tripping.com" rel="nofollow">http://Tripping.com</a>, which isn't about room rentals, it's about meeting strangers while traveling globally.<p>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.<p>Jen O'Neil, is one of the most fantastic young CEO's I know. The whole team is simply amazing.

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.<p>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.

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)

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

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.

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.

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?

Something like <a href="http://www.trustcloud.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.trustcloud.com</a> could help in situations like these.

Another sign that AirBnb could care less about its customers.<p>When first AirBnb heard about this, they could've<p>a.) Choose to protect her and other users from future incidents<p>b.) Hide and hope it goes away<p>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).<p>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.

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

This whole air bnb story is blown out of proportions.<p>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).

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 <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822946" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822946</a>

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

&#62; "He made no inquiry into my current emotional state, my safety or my well being."<p>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.<p>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.