

Airbnb Competitor Checks IDs: 'We Don't Want to Trade Security for Volume' - citadrianne
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/07/29/airbnb-competitor-roomorama-we-dont-want-to-trade-security-for-volume/

======
cdp
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.

~~~
SemanticFog
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
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.

------
mbreese
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
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
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
the sites just have to remember to put that sign "we reserve the right to
refuse service to anyone" and they are covered.

~~~
btilly
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.

~~~
gcb
the point of the comment i was first replying to was that 'it always worked
for brick and mortar shops'

here in LA it's impossible to walk into a bar or restaurant and not see that
sign.

but yes, i see your point too.

------
dadkins
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
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
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
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
_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.

------
untog
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
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
Even if they don't, they'll come out stronger.

~~~
pseudonym
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
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
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.

~~~
untog
Bah, hit the reply limit. I wasn't specifically thinking about US media- UK
tabloids would have a field day with this, for one. AirBnb is a presence in
Europe as well...

------
kevinpet
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
It helps, but it still wouldn't protect you from someone serious on bullying a
host or the system.

------
indiefan
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
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
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).

------
cubix
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
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>

~~~
msg
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>

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
Some friends of mine started <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.

------
driverdan
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.

------
almightygod
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
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.

~~~
Jun8
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
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).

~~~
klenwell
Has anyone elaborated on the meth-lab scenario? I'd like to hear the economics
on that. Wouldn't it be a lot of effort, planning, and personal risk for the
bad guys to book the room through airbnb and then just trash it seemingly
maliciously like they did?

If this really was a case of some kind of mobile meth-lab operation, shouldn't
we expect a number of other cases like this going on with airbnb rentals?

I suspect one of the reasons that airbnb was slow to reimburse EJ is that
details are so bizarre on the surface. I think the hotel industry conspiracy
theories are absurd. But I am curious to find out what was really go on in
that apartment for a week whatever it was.

~~~
r00fus
I was just going with jonknee's assessment:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2814395>

My parents' rental house which got used as a methlab when the original tenants
left without notice (and apparently left it open). Some of the imagery seemed
familiar.

Conspiracy theories aside, I'm sure most folks familiar with airbnb were
wondering when this moment would occur, and what the response would be.

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

------
almightygod
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
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
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
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
It's the roomorama service requesting proof not the users.

~~~
a3camero
Oh I know it is in that service but I don't think that's what the poster I was
replying to was suggesting. He's suggesting as a host that you do that
(although perhaps I misunderstood).

------
ilamont
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.

------
tobylane
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?

------
d0ne
Something like <http://www.trustcloud.com> could help in situations like
these.

------
chailatte
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
Actually, someone has been arrested in connection with this case:
[http://allthingsd.com/20110729/airbnbs-rental-nightmare-
ends...](http://allthingsd.com/20110729/airbnbs-rental-nightmare-ends-in-
arrest-and-one-still-very-unlucky-renter/)

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

------
sentinel
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).

------
paisible
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>

~~~
untog
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.

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

~~~
kenjackson
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
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.

------
azov
> "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.

