Originally Posted by
Forrest Bump
This.
OP would go mad seeing his ID/passport photocopied from hotel desks like is often used in Italy.
I definitely trust more Airbnb servers than hotels pc or worse showing ID in person at Airbnb host checking in.
Interesting, I've never been requested to copy my ID in Italy in over 20 stays. In Europe rarely anyway, only Hilton sometimes tries, but they accept a copy without the number like everyone else.
My main issue with sharing an ID with Airbnb is that thousands and thousands of people can easily access it. I contacted support on my rejected ID, and the first-line (probably community support) could tell me exactly what was blocked, which means that every random employee and probably even volunteers can lookup all ID's.
But as a computer scientist I indeed don't appreciate ID's being stored on their servers either. Everything is hackable in the end anyway, if financial institutions and tons of Fortune 500 companies are, Airbnb is for sure. Why do they store ID's anyway if it's only for verification (as they claim).
But I definitely agree, ID's are everywhere and most people don't care, I just only prefer to reduce the odds, having seen identity theft happen. It's just silly that copies with the social security number removed are rejected by default.