Too little, too late?

Her blog posts - including some detailing Airbnb's less than exemplary response to her plight, and its apparent attempts to keep EJ from going public with her story - ignited a storm of bad publicity for the service and incited some changes in how Airbnb does business. To tell the truth, yesterday Airbnb issued a new terms of use agreement, which now incorporates a $50,000 insurance policy against renters trashing your place.

You can exchange information via Airbnb's own messaging service, however you can't exchange phone numbers, email addresses, or the addresses of other Web sites with someone until afterwards you've said Yes to a reservation. Airbnb will to the letter censor your messages and remove this content.

You're not in every respect without protections, however they're tissue-paper thin. You can require that anyone who wants to rent your joint post a photo of themselves, say why they want to rent your place, and have their phone numbers verified via an SMS or robocall. You can as well rely on reviews of the renter by other Airbnb members, if there are any, and/or only rent to people who've linked their Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn accounts to their Airbnb account.

The problem is that this system can be easily gamed

The problem is that this system can be easily gamed. It took me about half an hour to create a fake Airbnb profile, upload a bogus picture, link it to a false Facebook account, and have the verification code sent to a free Internet VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) number.

Author Dan Tynan has been writing about Internet privacy for the last 3,247 years. He wrote a book on the topic for O'Reilly Media and edited a series of articles on Net privacy for PC World that were finalists for a National Magazine Award. While his spare time he is part of the dynamic duo behind eSarcasm, the not-but-award-winning geek humor site he tends along with JR Raphael.

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