>Um, this is incorrect. Hotels are vandalized all the time...

that is the point why they take down your credit card data before giving you the keys. Your vandalizing after that is just an entertainment your card will be charged for.

>The security measures you suggest won't stop that sort of attacker.

so you think the attacker has perfect credit history and there is absolutely no sense in checking it?

I'd expect they used a stolen card (or a stolen card number, more likely). There's almost no way anyone could be stupid enough to do that with their own card.

Probably a stolen card from their last airbnb rental/trash/steal creditcards.

Or a prepaid debit card (do those work with airbnb)?

The interesting thing will be the gmail account's IP history. I suspect SFPD will get the IP history and I hope this DJ Pattrson logged in from an identifiable location (or that the phone number, presumably a prepaid, is linkable to location and identity somehow).

SFPD is one of the better police forces to have to work with on this; I'd sure rather be dealing with them than Oakland or various other East Bay police forces. You might also want to involve REACT (http://www.reacttf.org/), the Silicon Valley (incl SF) high tech crime task force. They'll be good at tracking someone down through online identity, compared to local police.

I wonder if AirBnB has offered the host/victim some AirBnB credit to stay elsewhere while her place is being de-trashed.

Well the solution there is not to accept a credit card as a form of identification.

I check into lots of hotels and about 50% of the time they require an actual government-issued photo ID; I assume for room-trashing situations and the probably more-common situation where somebody racks up a huge bill and then steals away in the middle of the night leaving nothing but a stolen CC number.

It's a lot more difficult, and the legal penalties are much steeper, for forging a government-issued identity document than for using a prepaid credit card with a false name on it.

You're giving thieves and vandals far too much credit. For most, if they had the intelligence to get away with the crime, then they'd have the intelligence to know not to commit it.

I hate to break it to you, but people are this stupid and do try to use stolen credit cards for hotels all the time.

I actually feel a lot more comfortable "harshly using" (not really vandalizing, but making full use of) a hotel than someone's airbnb, couchsurfing, or friendly couchsurfing arrangement -- because it's an impersonal commercial space, I'll use all the water I want, leave wet towels all over, etc., whereas at airbnb I feel like I should be even more polite and neat than I would be in my own home.

Interesting point -- I wonder if people who enjoy breaking things are more likely to use AirBnB, since they're destroying something that really matters to someone.

Wow, these shitbags need to get help.

I've said "to prevent and offset". It's about managing the event (offsetting the bad cases when prevention fails). Having a reception area allows you to have their signature on the contract, to validate their identity (name, nationality, passport) based on the photo ID and how they look in real life and to have on record a lot of validated information about them (which will sure help with police and insurance in case something bad happens).

You said "can be used without issues".

I agree identity validation, and being there to hear loud noises/odd behavior makes it harder / less fun for an attacker -- but this is not what allows hotels to operate effectively. Some percentage of hotel registrations surely occur with stolen passports, etc. Hotels rather build this cost into their business model in a manner similar to an insurance company.

Because hotels rent so many rooms at a time, they can treat these costs in the same way that your car insurance company treats accident risk -- something that is always happening that can be offset in real time by honest people using the hotel as per the contract.

Letting people into your home does not have that risk-sharing property -- it's insuring a single driver instead of tens of thousands -- you open yourself up to a very real risk of losing a lot of money.

(Not to mention that hotels are not personally attached to the rental rooms).

...and perhaps most importantly of all, a witness who can stand up in court and say "Yes, that is the person to whom I gave the keys to room 314".

But if you have their passport and secured their credit card info, you can report them to the police, and perhaps keep them from leaving the country if the place was trashed totally (ie burned down the building maliciously)

So if you register and book via AirBnB you will see that much of that information is required (email, credit card, and billing info specifically).

The attacker in the story must have somehow gotten stolen credit card information...

A hotel is likely to have CCTV in the lobby, full time security, contacts with local police and lots of institutional experience dealing with disruptive guests. All things that the average part-time innkeeper doesn't have.