There's an increasing trend toward startups that disintermediate between traditional providers / purchasers.
eBay and Craigslist were early instances. I'd count eTrade and other online trading startups as another instance. Blogs, generally, cut out the middleman in publishing.
There's couchsurfing.com, various direct-lending startups, etc. And now AirBnB.
Some of these are fairly low-risk activities.
Craigslist, having been in the business for nearly 14 years (the domain was registered 11 Sept 1997) have a prominently displayed and long list of ways to protect yourself against fraud, including very explicit warnings and suggestions. It smells very real. And there are still a ton of posts to the feedback/help forums asking / warning / telling of scams attempted or perpetrated. And a few notorious headlines.
Startups especially like to portray the world as consisting of mostly nice people. This may be the case, but the exceptions to that rule can be, well, exceptionally bad.
Close family friends run a B&B. They've done it successfully for nearly 30 years, and have mostly good stories to tell, as well as some cool celebrity guests. It takes a mindset, especially when you're inviting strangers into your house (their current setup has separate guest cottages), and it's a lot of work.
Ultimately, AirBnB is going to have to look at whether or not they want to put a bunch of rank amateurs in touch with one another (with the inherent risks), or serve as an intermediary for more established entities (much eBay and CL traffic is now through at least semi-official dealers and brokers).
I can think of some explicit steps EJ could have taken to protect herself: having a storage locker and moving valuables off-site would have been a good first step. Meeting the guest another. Some sort of in-apartment surveillance, at least of entry an exit areas, a third. At the very least this would help track the perp / establish whodunnit.
AirBnB could self-insure or take a guest deposit of some sort (possibly encouraging credit-card fraud) against such issues. I suspect they'll have to or fold with the publicity of this story.
One of the lending companies I spoke doesn't assume systemic risk (based on credit scores and such), but does assume all risk in the event of identity fraud. This would be a very good model for AirBnB to follow. Bruce Schneier has long railed on how credit card / debit card fraud proliferates in large part because banks bear little of tye risk (most falls on merchants, some on cardholders).
Thank you for a rational response to this. This is far from crippling for AirBnB; if some of these things haven't been worked out yet, then there's no reason they can't handle that.
The main damage will be from the publicity from this story. Now there's at least one cement example of somebody suffering greatly, that fear will penetrate anybody who uses this service from here on out.
eBay and Craigslist were early instances. I'd count eTrade and other online trading startups as another instance. Blogs, generally, cut out the middleman in publishing.
There's couchsurfing.com, various direct-lending startups, etc. And now AirBnB.
Some of these are fairly low-risk activities.
Craigslist, having been in the business for nearly 14 years (the domain was registered 11 Sept 1997) have a prominently displayed and long list of ways to protect yourself against fraud, including very explicit warnings and suggestions. It smells very real. And there are still a ton of posts to the feedback/help forums asking / warning / telling of scams attempted or perpetrated. And a few notorious headlines.
Startups especially like to portray the world as consisting of mostly nice people. This may be the case, but the exceptions to that rule can be, well, exceptionally bad.
Close family friends run a B&B. They've done it successfully for nearly 30 years, and have mostly good stories to tell, as well as some cool celebrity guests. It takes a mindset, especially when you're inviting strangers into your house (their current setup has separate guest cottages), and it's a lot of work.
Ultimately, AirBnB is going to have to look at whether or not they want to put a bunch of rank amateurs in touch with one another (with the inherent risks), or serve as an intermediary for more established entities (much eBay and CL traffic is now through at least semi-official dealers and brokers).
I can think of some explicit steps EJ could have taken to protect herself: having a storage locker and moving valuables off-site would have been a good first step. Meeting the guest another. Some sort of in-apartment surveillance, at least of entry an exit areas, a third. At the very least this would help track the perp / establish whodunnit.
AirBnB could self-insure or take a guest deposit of some sort (possibly encouraging credit-card fraud) against such issues. I suspect they'll have to or fold with the publicity of this story.
One of the lending companies I spoke doesn't assume systemic risk (based on credit scores and such), but does assume all risk in the event of identity fraud. This would be a very good model for AirBnB to follow. Bruce Schneier has long railed on how credit card / debit card fraud proliferates in large part because banks bear little of tye risk (most falls on merchants, some on cardholders).
This will be interesting to watch.