[purge]

One of my friends was caught out by a similar scam last year. There is plenty of prior art for airbnb to look at when developing a safe platform for people to communicate through. At the very least they should disallow exchange of e-mail / non-airbnb websites via the platform communication channels.

[buro9]

> At the very least they should disallow exchange of e-mail / non-airbnb websites via the platform communication channels.

They do this, and it's a pain in the arse for regular users.

I've only just got back from a 2 week stay in Italy, and unfortunately one of the glasses broke in the dishwasher. I found the replacement online and after apologising to the host offered to replace the glass with an identical at my inconvenience.

Damned if we could have that conversation about the replacement on AirBNB though. We were both unable to share links to shops from which the glasses are available. Eventually having to agree to take the conversation off of AirBNB so we could resolve it.

It's unsatisfactory though as this is the very type of conversation that both the host and myself want recorded through AirBNB so that if anything did go awry AirBNB would have an evidence trail.

Far better would be to do a URL forwarder in the style of Twitter's t.co and to monitor all outbound URLs and allow AirBNB to block domains and phishing sites centrally from each and every message sent (into the future too), whilst allowing all legitimate conversation and link sharing to occur.

This would even allow AirBNB to inform customers who visit URLs that are suspected of phishing, and detect accounts sharing such links much sooner.

[YokoZar]

The block on URLs is actually there to prevent prospective guests and hosts from just arranging an informal booking off site and cutting AirBNB out of the picture. It's the same reason you can't send phone numbers or email addresses in chat messages until after they pay.

[buro9]

OK.

So after we pay... it would be good if we could actually converse fully and share links.

The host also said that she had sent me a link to a web page with house rules that describes where recycling and garbage goes, etc. I never received this, and I presume she had just put the link in a message, hit send, and AirBNB removed the link and nothing else happened.

Once we pay, the conversation should be unrestricted.

[purge]

I don't understand how this scam was realised then. They must've managed to get access to the applicants true email address somehow?

[buro9]

My comment wasn't a scam, just frustration at overly strict policies inconveniencing the vast majority of good users.

And it's not hard to get someone's real email once you have a few clues. Such as their profile image/avatar... just hit tineye.com or Google Image Search, and find out the sources, look at profile info on LinkedIn or Facebook, look at other web links... find almost anything (CV, blog, custom domain, Twitter, HN profiles) and you'll get to the email address very quickly.

The time between start and end of that is minutes.