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Be aware of phishing at airbnb

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Re: Be aware of phishing at airbnb

#21

Post by jcr »

spacefight wrote: post #8
squids wrote: post #7

We just had a run in with a scam for a place in Majorca on Airbnb. The place looked amazing and was reasonably priced for what it was so I reverse image searched the pictures and it turns out they had lifted them from a resort in the Carribean. The google maps view of the place lined up nicely with the other property so they'd obviously put some time into choosing the right fake. Luckily we cancelled our booking with…

For reverse image search, I often use tineye.com What else is there and what did you use?

This works well:

firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/image-search-...

chromium: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/image-search-optio...

It handles Tineye, Google, Yandex, Baidu, and others via right-click menu.

Re: Be aware of phishing at airbnb

#22

Post by userbinator »

tudorw wrote: post #12

Perhaps Gmail et al could have something a bit more pro-active to detect this kind of bait and switch, so if an address has been used a number of times, then a small variation on that address is seen, then steps are taken to warn the user.

A lot of people have emails on multiple domains that often forward to each other; I feel doing this is going to cause a lot of false positives.

Re: Be aware of phishing at airbnb

#24

Post by Cieplak »

sentientmachine wrote: post #16

Also watch out for a bait and switch on Airbnb. I'm actually sitting in a nice apt now from airbnb. So I am happy with it. But there is another host who is trying to get me for an $1800 cleaning fee. What happens is you book a room in advance for a month. Then the host waits until 12 hours before the point of no cancelation to say "its not available but there is another one for a lot less cost that is a lot worse.".…

Just call your bank and you'll get your money back immediately. The chargeback process is hugely biased in favor of the cardholder. You can even win the chargeback if you had stayed in the place and it was not as advertised. If you start filing a lot of chargebacks, though, you'll likely be flagged by the card network.

Re: Be aware of phishing at airbnb

#25

Post by jamandeggs »

amirmc wrote: post #4

This kind of thing isn't unique to Airbnb. I believe any online marketplace (eg eBay etc), has similar problems. My usual approach is to keep as much communication on the platform as possible, including the payment process. Anyone who tries to communicate off the platform (eg send money via another method) immediately warrants more scrutiny. In this case, there are probably things Airbnb can do to help users and redu…

Keeping the communication on AirBNB doesn't really help. I've had hosts who admitted that they listed a fake address with fake names via AirBNB's messages, but AirBNB doesn't care.

Re: Be aware of phishing at airbnb

#26

Post by uladzislau »

So what happened with using some common sense and due diligence? If you're not an adventure seeker choose the host with lots of reviews. If the rate for the property compared with other listings is too good to be true then it's a scam.

Re: Be aware of phishing at airbnb

#28

Post by buro9 »

purge wrote: post #10

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.

> 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.

Re: Be aware of phishing at airbnb

#29

Post by jalapl »

Just to clarify, the naked e-airbnb request indeed redirects to airbnb website. The generated by the cheater URL was the only one working fine.

It had the same layout as the whole airbnb website and every url available on that website was also redirecting to real airbnb website .... except the one with payment and booking details ...

Re: Be aware of phishing at airbnb

#30

Post by kilburn »

@everyone: Renting your place through airbnb is most probably illegal in Barcelona. Please double or triple-check any offers you get because you must be registered (and pay) if you want to rent your place to tourists [1] here.

@poster: Contact me (mynickname at la3 dot org) if you are running short on money because of the scam and need a place to stay for a few days. This is a couchsurfing style offer, not airbnb style.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/07/airbnb-fin...

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