Here is the problem, AirBnB and other businesses like AirBnB do not scale for the following reasons:
These businesses are faced with a challenge of a double edge sword in nature. That is, hosts are demanding verification using government ID, while technically-savvy guests like myself and others who understand the risk of providing sensitive information are fighting back against giving PII data. For anyone who doesn't know what PII means, it stands for "Personal Identifiable Information"; this includes: full name, address, date of birth, phone number, social security number, or national ID numbers, in the case of other countries, etc.
While full name is an acceptable risk to provide because one can argue that it is public knowledge than can be found with little to no effort through Google search, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, etc. other PII information such as Driver License, Social Security Number, National ID Number, etc. are considered extremely sensitive in nature and should only be shared with government agencies, financial institutions, and employers.
Anyone who follow the news about the risk of digital data knows that the issue we face globally is serious and is caused by businesses collecting unnecessary PII/PCI data that they don't need and their inability to provide bullet proof protection of such data. The reality is, there is no bullet proof method to protect this data a 100% and even a reasonable level of protection is costly to businesses and thus they go out of their way to not protect such data no matter how many times they falsely claim that they have the best security.
People should rigidly and persistently decline to provide any business any PII data or any other type of data that is considered sensitive. People should publicly shame companies who demand such data, including "date of birth". No legitimate business, other than employer, financial institution you do business with (your bank/credit union), or gov't agency, have any legitimacy to request sensitive data. Yes, your data of birth is sensitive and should not be given other businesses, including Facebook or other social media. Many companies claim that Date of Birth is necessary to ensure the person is above 18 years of age. This is none-sense because all they need is to ask: Are you 18 years of age or older? Companies claim that by doing so, one could lie and say Yes. This is a stupid logic because someone could like about their date of birth anyway. Please remember that once you sensitive data is on the internet or held by a business, it can never be taken back specially with the US having no privacy laws to protect people.
So what is the solution? How do you protect hosts who, rightfully, wants a level of assurance that potential guests of their property are legitimate and responsible? The answer is simple. There are many other ways to verify the identity of someone and establish trust without requesting any sensitive information and without placing everyone's identity at risk.
Businesses can use services that provides what's called "public information" that generally only the individual being verified knows of such data. For example. AirBnB and other businesses can establish a first line of trust and verification by requesting minimal information such as first and last name and home address, both are considered PII information, but are acceptable information to share.
Once the full name is mapped to a home address and verified through public information service that the name does in fact map to an address, AirBnB can ask a series of additional multiple-choice questions from public record services. An example of such questions are:
Which address did you live in between 1998 and 2009:
a) <address 1>
b) <address 2>
c) <address 3>
d) none of the above
Between the year 2012 and 2016, you obtained a loan for which amount?
a) $10,000 - $20,000
b) $100,000 - $200,000
c) $70,000 - $110,000
d) none of the above
Which of the following employers have you worked for in the past
a) employer 1
b) employer 2
c) employer 3
d) none of the above
You catch my drift. The full name and address helps the business establish an identity and verify that it's true based on public record by mapping the name to the address. The additional series of questions provides further assurance that the person is who they claim to be. The business must ensure that once a question is answered and submitted, it cannot be changed and no indication on whether the response was right or wrong should be provided back to prevent social and reverse engineering attacks.
This methods provides the same level of verification and assurance to the hosts all while protecting the identity and sensitive information of all AirBnB customers by not collecting such data to begin with thus relieving the business from the hassle of having to protect such data or the negative and financial impact of a compromise in the event the company was collecting sensitive data.
