American Woman’s Airbnb Hacked by Norwegian Man

I am a frequent Airbnb user with a perfect rating. I was going to California for the weekend for a friend’s wedding. My husband, two other couples, and I were going to share a cabin. I tried to access my account yesterday to contact the host and the site told me my email was not valid. So I got on the Airbnb app on my phone, which luckily had still been logged in. From there I could see that someone had taken over my account, changed the email address and phone number to his, changed the picture, and changed the name. No matter what was on the profile there were still reviews saying “Sarah was a great guest.” No hosts seem to notice this and are gladly letting “Masteusz” stay with them. He is sending people messages in Spanish and as we speak is staying in someone’s home in Mexico City.

I called Airbnb about 14 hours ago and told them they needed to not only fix this but also find us another place to stay ASAP. I heard nothing for several hours, called again, and was told I would hear from someone in a couple hours. After hearing nothing, I called again this morning and was told they would “send it again”, that the case still didn’t have a case manager, and that there was no supervisor or anyone else I could talk to. Meanwhile, through the app, I could see that hosts are still none the wiser that this guy is a fake because they are still communicating with him about key drop offs, etc. In addition, my idiot host didn’t seem to notice that the person he was corresponding with named “Sarah” changed her name to Masteusz and is now a man from Norway. Masteusz canceled my reservation. When I messaged the host saying I didn’t want to cancel my reservation and that I was hacked he said “I’m sorry to hear that, Masteusz.” After having no luck on the phone, I posted something on the Airbnb Facebook page thinking the PR people wouldn’t like this situation. They told me to “tweet” them… really?