In March 2017 I received an email from Airbnb stating that my email had been successfully changed. As I was not traveling at the time and hadn’t used Airbnb recently, I went on the app and realized that not only had someone changed my email but the picture, the name, and the phone number. He also booked a luxury condo in Montreal for 572 GBP ($750USD) the same day. I immediately canceled the booking, changed all information back to my own, and contacted the host, Sophie, as she could potentially host someone who is not me and empty the house. Sophie couldn’t seem to be bothered and her lack of interest made me think she was part of the scam. She apparently has three luxury condos in Montreal and almost too many reviews per month to be real. I’ll let you be the judge. Two months later, I am still battling with Airbnb to get refunded or investigate.
Tag Archives: airbnb hacked
Horrible Business: Airbnb Account Hacked
I listed two of my homes on Airbnb less than one year ago. Since that time my account was hacked; I was not notified by Airbnb that this happened but only found out when I could not log in to my account. I missed bookings due to this issue and as a result lost money. I spent hours of my time on the phone over the past two months trying to have this resolved and get input from their “trust and safety” team to no avail. I never received any email communication from Airbnb and though I changed my login password several times I was repeatedly locked out of my account. Airbnb cannot explain what happened and they say there is no error showing on their end, yet I am repeatedly locked out of my account. Today for the last time I called Airbnb to try and reset my password. Since I had not been receiving their emails in past phone calls I had been given a temporary password to log in. The representative “helping” me was unwilling to do that so I asked for my account to be closed. He claims that he did in fact close it but there is no way for me to know for certain, I did get a ticket number but to verify the account is closed I would need to call them once again and present this ticket number, wasting yet more of my time. This business is horrible, the lack of customer service is astounding, and the safety of any information on their website is questionable. My account was hacked and not one word came from Airbnb to warn me that my pertinent contact information and payout method had been changed. I will no longer do any business with this company and strongly caution anyone from using this site.
Airbnb Profile Hacked, Customer Service Unwilling to Help
My Airbnb profile has been hacked and the company seems unable to help. The hacker cancelled an impending stay causing myself and the host great inconvenience. Unable to access my account, I was therefore unable to contact the host and had to do so through a circuitous route, via a friend’s account. Airbnb has been very difficult to contact by phone and when I have gotten through have been very non-specific in their responses. They prefer to use bland corporate speak talking about trusted communities and valued members which means very little if not accompanied by action. As it stands my account with four years’ worth of good reviews is gone. I am getting emails from Airbnb addressing me by a different name and asking me to review somewhere I haven’t stayed. Their cyber security clearly leaves a lot to be desired and their customer support seems nonexistent.
Fraudulent Activity on Account, Airbnb Keeps me Waiting
I have a UK Airbnb guest account and someone hacked my account, changed my email address and changed the telephone number to my account. No verification is required for someone to do this. No confirmation email stating “click here to confirm changes,” or anything like that. They then used the card details stored to make a transaction of £372.00. They were obviously not required to enter my card’s security number either. I spoke to the customer service advisor who was nice enough, but asked me to put the information in an email to pass on to the security team. Considering this is quite serious fraudulent activity and I can no longer access my account (because my email and telephone have been changed) I would have expected a response by now to reassure me that my account is safe. There has been nothing. No email contact. I have no clue whether my account is safe and Airbnb makes it very difficult to contact them by phone. This is quite worrying. I have been waiting in a queue to speak to an advisor now for 17 minutes so far. Fortunately, my credit card company responded in a much quicker and more efficient manner and they have cancelled the transaction. I no longer consider Airbnb a secure website and wouldn’t recommend it to others.
Unauthorized Transaction: Airbnb Security Breach?
I discovered a few months ago that my credit card had been charged more that 500 CHF from Airbnb. As I didn’t make any reservation at this time (I hadn’t used Airbnb’s services for months), it occurred to me that this was an unauthorized transaction. A few days after my account had been credited, Airbnb refunded the same credit card the same amount plus 6 CHF from fees that I had to pay to my bank for a transaction in another currency. Airbnb refuses to explain what this transaction was for (as I didn’t do it) and also refuses to reimburse the fees. I suspect there has been a security breach at Airbnb they don’t want to talk about. One employee replied to me:
“Additionally, we’re unable to release any information regarding the reservation or the user accounts involved without a formal request from a government agency or law enforcement, such as a subpoena. Should a government agency or law enforcement contact us regarding this issue, Airbnb will fully cooperate with such officials.”
It is not ok that customers have to pay for Airbnb’s security issues without any explanation.
Airbnb Wants to Give Hacker my Credit Card Number
I received a message from Airbnb that someone had changed my email. I immediately replied to this message as instructed saying I didn’t change my email. Days went by and there was no response. I finally found the customer support email on the website and called. The customer support representative told me to just create a new account. I wanted all my reviews and history. I discovered that I can actually log in to my account using Facebook – I didn’t remember ever connecting it – and it works. Now I can access my account and see that a hacker did indeed change my email and password. I can’t change the email because it requires knowing the password. I can’t change the password because it requires access to the email. At this point both the hacker and I have access to the account. I called Airbnb back and told customer support the situation. The response of the representative was that they couldn’t help me until I added my credit card to the account. Yes, that is correct: Airbnb will not even begin to help me recover my hacked account until I provide my credit card information to a hacker who they openly acknowledge has access to my account. This is insane.
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?
Account Hacked from Asia, Customer Service Does Nothing
I got a few emails written in Chinese and thought it was junk so I deleted them. On October 15th, I got an email saying it was time to check in for my reservations. Immediate red flag. I logged into my Airbnb account and sure enough I had reservations I did not make. It looked to me as though someone actually checked in on October 15th. One reservation was in progress; I clicked cancel as quickly as I could. There was still a receipt listed but under a card I did not own. In fact, there were several cards in my payment method folder that i did not recognize. This made me think whoever it was possibly opened credit cards in my name. Thankfully I have not seen anything unusual on my charges or credit score.
While I was in the process of changing my password for Airbnb and google (I signed in with my Google account) someone had made two more reservations. These were for Japan and possibly China. I was freaking out so I went ahead and took extra precautionary steps: I cancelled all my cards and had my credit card company and bank send me new ones with new numbers. I also changed my passwords to everything. When I spoke to Airbnb about this, they opened a ticket and placed my information on high priority. I called back several times and still did not speak to or get a call from anyone working on this account takeover case. The customer service line claimed they can only put in my complaint and someone from another fraud department will call me back. It has been seven days and I’m starting to believe there is no other department. I cannot just delete my Airbnb account and be done with it because I have an upcoming nine-night vacation in two weeks for which my condos are already paid through Airbnb. I think after this trip I will delete my account and forget I discovered Airbnb. I always booked my vacations through Airbnb and now I have no faith in their customer service. After I took matters into my own hands I haven’t seen any activity on my Airbnb account but I’m very cautious now.
Airbnb Account Hacked, Booked in China
My Airbnb account was hacked. I received a text message in Chinese from some unknown number, then I received an email from Airbnb confirming a reservation to check in today in China. I live in the US and never made this reservation. I checked my account through the Airbnb app. Indeed, there was reservation showing I needed to check in today in China for $555. I also noted two recent searches on my account for homes in China – that was not me. I called Airbnb immediately to let them know someone had access to my account. They “opened a case.” Over three hours later, I heard nothing. I cancelled my credit card which was charged for the amount. So now some idiot has my account information in addition to my credit card number.
I called Airbnb again and they said there were working on it. While they were working, never once did they suggest I should block my card nor did they seem to care that my account was compromised. I was told they have millions of people with cases open and escalated my request. These people should not be allowed to do business. Now their lack of security is my problem and they could care less. I have never even rented a house through them. I reserved a house a few months back and then cancelled the reservation when my plans changed – I paid a fee for the cancellation. I wish I had closed the account then, since apparently they have no information security standards to protect consumers’ information.
Airbnb Theft from my Checking Account
On August 8, 2016 and the days following I received about two dozen emails from Airbnb, each with a subject line about a supposed booking of mine. I never made any booking. The last time I used Airbnb was almost a year ago, in October 2015. I clicked on one of the emails but the web page that came up didn’t make any sense. I didn’t pot or respond with any personal information: not my name, not my banking info. Today I discovered that Airbnb somehow withdrew $509 from my checking account without any consent or any account information. That is grand theft. I would like Airbnb to immediately return these funds to my account. That’s my rent money!