Giving personal details to a host

[Scott2157]

I have booked an airbnb.  No problem? 

Now the HOST has required me to complete a list of all guests and said he needs MY personal ID (eg Driving licence)

He says it is part of his house rules

IS THIS ALLOWED

[Andrea6232]

Ciao @Scott2157 ,

I don't know in UK but as far as Italy is concerned not only it is allowed but it is required by law 😉 we need to register all guests to local police when they arrive, if not we may be subject to sanctions

Andrea

https://airbnb.com/h/la-casa-sul-canale-con-piscina-jacuzzi-in-giardino

[Martha1073]

Us too here in Portland.  I am supposed to have name / address of guests by law.

[Kia272]

@Scott2157 Yes, it's allowed. The host is protecting his  property, and it's his right to ask. 

You must realize that for every honest, trouble-free guest, there are those with unfinished profiles, fake names, no photo in their profile, and other issues. AirBnB does very little to vet guests, as well as very little to support hosts when trouble arises from a guest. 

It's also a security issue, and may be a matter of simply ensuring that the person who booked is also showing up for the reservation. Third party bookings are not allowed on AirBnB. 

If I were to ask the same, and the guest refused to comply, I would not allow the stay. You shouldn't take it personally. 

[Rashad30]

The issue isn't merely asking for the information. The issue is asking people to send the personal information via insecure means like Airbnb messages. It would be different if the host requested the quest to use a secure file/message transfer platform like Bitwarden Send

[Rashad30]

I am speaking as a professional software engineer. Airbnb messages have zero encryption and no time constraints or access controls for how long sensitive documents can be viewed. It only takes one host to be hacked for a guest's ID and information to be leaked online.

[Rashad30]

requested the guest* (typo correction)

[Kia272]

@Rashad30 Yet you'll use the AirBnB payment system to pay for your stay? 

Think about this: AirBnB doesn't allow communication outside the app because they're afraid that hosts and guests will book outside the platform and ABB will lose money. 

So a host's hands are tied. By virtue of the fact that all of our accounts are password protected, that's about the best you can hope for.

I believe that almost any website anywhere is vulnerable to hacking. That's pretty much where we're at in 2024. We all want the convenience of the Internet, but we're subject to its inherent weaknesses. 

[Rashad30]

The messaging system is not designed to be secure. The payment details are stored per standard security practice. Read about Tokenization:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenization_(data_security)

Have you ever designed software? I have. I have worked on payment systems. I know how this stuff works.

[Rashad30]

It's mind boggling to me how end users attempt to equivocate the security of one part of the system with the security of the entire system. There are different levels of security and access controls for different aspects of the software. Just like you can write a plain text document on your laptop or you encrypt such document and limit which users that can access it.

[Rashad30]

TL; DR on payment tokenization :

Airbnb only stores a token. That token is a meaningless random key. So even if Airbnb is hacked, your credit card is still safe.

When you make a payment, Airbnb shares the unique token with payment processor. The payment processor has the original card data stored in an encrypted database.

Makes sense?

[Rashad30]

The token is used by the payment processor to look up the actual credit card details when processing a transaction

[Kia272]

Congratulations. Yet you don't know how to tag people. So I guess the solution is that you don't use AirBnB. 

[Elena4354]

Hello @Scott2157, I am a host in Portugal and by law we are required to register every guest staying in our apartments, so we need to collect personal information from guests, including ID details.

Regards.

Elena.

[Paula]

Hello @Scott2157, welcome to the Airbnb Community Center 😊

Our Hosts have shared their opinions. Please let us know when you have some time to review this and if you have any further questions.

Regards,