Airbnb launches Verified Identification to help bring more accountability

kevin_morrill · on May 7, 2013

The service they use to do this is Jumio (http://www.jumio.com/) Looks like it might be useful to other web apps.

I was wondering the other day whether there's a viable SaaS business going the next step and verifying a person's real identity and address by actually visiting them in person. Like CAPTCHA to an extreme.

cicloid · on May 7, 2013

After visiting Jumio I started looking for alternatives and just found http://www.miicard.com

A couple of minutes later I was reading about how to validate drivers license or how startssl does verification.

The only thing left is real physical verification, which probably doesn't scale well and can be prohibitive.

What is out there to verify identity? Am I missing something?

dannowatts · on May 7, 2013

i think this is a wonderful addition to what airbnb offers!

i've used airbnb for a couple of years regularly and i know that if a host has verified identification it will help instill another layer of trust when booking a rental.

vitalysh · on May 7, 2013

I wanted to book a holiday place with AirBnB this summer but decided against it. My worry is: what happens when host just disappears? For example, we rent nice house, arrive to the airport, try to call the host and he is not there. What next?

I'm aware that I will get my money back from AirBnB, but at that moment in the airport, what will you do?

dannowatts · on May 8, 2013

I stay in contact regularly with the host (on the day of as well as leading up to my trip) because of some of those same concerns. to help alleviate any of those concerns in the first place, I don't book a host that :

  - has poor rating
  - has less than a certain number of reviews in the past 3 months
  - looks like they own a ton of properties as rentals, not their personal residence.
  - responds snarky or in a condescending way to reviewers who voice level headed concerns
  - have less than 3 photos
  - don't have photos of the actual bed/sleeping device
  - have more photos of the neighborhood and google street view photos of whole foods nearby than of the actual place that I would be staying
  - doesn't respond within 48 hours

all that said, to answer your question, I believe AirBNB has "emergency" services available at any time that you can call and they will put you in a place for your trip in the event that you're at the airport and they flake out on you.