Scam URL link. Has anyone experienced this scam?

Nick-And-Sarah0
Level 2
Southampton, United Kingdom

Scam URL link. Has anyone experienced this scam?

Hi Airbnb Community,

 

My wife and I love Airbnb, we use it both as guests and hosts. We have been renting out our spare room in our family home since January 2015.

Anyway this has been going really well and we love meeting so many awesome people. Unfortunately we had an annoying incident this week. We received an equiry from a lady to book for 4 days. This lady called Laura, had only a picture on her profile, it looked like a coporate picture with her name blocked out.

Laura had no information on her profile, no reviews and she also had no verification. She had however signed up in March this year. I thought I would give her the benefit of the doubt, a new user and so probably hasn't got round to it yet.

Anyway she initially sent a very short message stating the dates she wanted to stay and asked if we had fast wifi. I replied welcoming her to Airbnb, confirming the dates were available and asking for a bit more information about her, about why she comining to the area etc... She very quickly replied back and said her age, where she was from, that she was coming for business and pleasure, that she lived in London for the past year. She then said that she's seen our Airbnb room listed twice on Airbnb and said that the other listing was cheaper, she then provided a link.

This is where I made a big mistake (facepalm), wondering what this was about I clicked on the link, it looked like the normal airbnb website, however it mentioned 'associates' in the URL link. It went straight to the login in page and so I logged in (so stupid) and it went straight to a room in America that was definitely not my room (I'm from the UK). 

I logged out, thinking this was weird and replied to Laura saying that the link didn't go to my room and confirmed the price of our room and asked if she would like to know any more information about our area. There was then no reply from her.

 

When my wife got home from work we spoke about it and feeling uncomfortable I phoned Airbnb, they were very helpful, they told me it was a scam link and that they would pass it to the Trust and Safety team. I was advised to change my Airbnb password. There was a 3 hour gap between me clicking and logining in on the scam link and me changing my password.

 

The Airbnb Trust and Safety team got back to me 24 hours later saying that they had removed Laura's profile (guessing the person probably wasn't called Laura) and repeating to change my password.

 

Anyway I was wondering if any other hosts have sadly experienced this? I can't help but still worry, is changing my password enough? Could this person have done something to my airbnb account that I'm not aware of yet?

 

Thanks in advance for your support and advice.

 

Nick

9 Replies 9
Ed-and-Hugh0
Level 10
Miami, FL

Thanks for reporting. We always have to be alert for scams. It's possible they got your bank routing information, address, phone, email, and other sensitive info.

Thanks for your reply.

 

I really hope they haven't got my bank details. It happened on Thursday and I've checked my account just now, nothing suspicious has come out.

 

Not quite sure how they would get the bank details as on the Airbnb page it only shows the last four digits. They also wouldn't know the 3 security numbers on the back of the card which I think is needed for all transactions. 

 

Would any hosts here change there bank details if this happened to them?

 

Cheers. 

@Nick-And-Sarah0 Just saw your second post.  I doubt the scammers got as far as getting your financial info, but if it were me I would check both my bank account and credit card activity on a regular basis and, if possible with your bank, put them on alert for unusual transactions.  I have seen complaints on twitter where some user's credit cards were used without their knowledge to book expensive reservations on Airbnb but I don't know what led up to that kind of scam.  Just be vigilant!

Clare0
Level 10
Templeton, CA

@Nick-And-Sarah0 and @Ed-and-Hugh0 I'm really surprised that Trust and Safety didn't tell you to re-check your settings, especially the notification settings before you changed your password.  You need to double check that you are alerted to any foreign login's and possible password changes.  

Sad to hear you fell for this very common scam.  

Nick-And-Sarah0
Level 2
Southampton, United Kingdom

Thanks for your reply Clare, that's really helpful. Notification settings were not mentioned when I spoke to Airbnb, however on changing my password I saw this option and so I added this. It's really good that Airbnb have this option. Fortunately I haven't seen any 'extra' activity since adding it.

 

It's a shame to hear it's a very common scam, I think I must be fortunate in that it's the first time it's happened to me. For future guests my wife and I have agreed to not accept anyone without verfications and we'll definitely be asking a few probing questions if they don't have any reviews or profile info.

 

It's such a shame that we can't trust everyone on here. 😞

@Nick-And-Sarah0 Well, it's not just Airbnb.  The entire internet universe is full of scammers.  Airbnb just happens to be a target as are Ebay and Amazon, for example.  You always need to be a bit suspicious.  Just a few hours ago another host reported the exact same scam (I found your listing elsewhere for cheaper...) as you did, but questioned it before looking at the phony listing. 

What the scammers are after is your user account so they can set up phony listing under your name.  When they are contacted by guests through inquiries or reservation requests (because they changed the notification settings), they ask the guest to wire transfer money to some bank, usually in Europe or Asia.   Here's a typical scam involving a picture in the listing:

 

Scam 2.JPG

Once communication is started off the Airbnb website through the scammer's email, they provide very convincing "invoices" with instructions to wire the money.  

 

Usually the listing is way too good for the price and people fall for it all the time. 

 

As for identification, you can set your Reservation Requirement to only allow guests with Verified ID to be able to make reservation requests.  (Anybody can send an inquiry, though).  This way, unverfied guests get weeded out from the get go.  I wouldn't go so far as to not accept guests without prior reviews.  I've had many and they have been great!

I sure you are more prepared now to screen out the phishing attempts.  Guard your email address and your password as you would the keys to your home and you'll be fine!

Nick-And-Sarah0
Level 2
Southampton, United Kingdom

Thanks Clare, I appreciate your time and your input.

 

I will definitely be way more careful next time, learning the hard way.

 

Many thanks.

hey @Nick-And-Sarah0 I am a very experienced host and I fell for this scam too, but it was on Wimdu, not airbnb.  The exact same scenario.   In the few hour window before I changed my password the scammers had gotten whatever info they wanted and they had managed to access my Pay pal account.      Unfortunately I don't use paypal that much so it was two days before I checked, and somehow (never received any good answer for this) they had cleaned out my ENTIRE paypal balance.   What they did was to make withdrawals under the company name "Wimdu".  So when I first glanced at Paypal I didn't think it was so odd because I thought it was a credit.  It took a few seconds to realize -nope, that was a debit, and then I noticed a series of transactions over 24 hours where various random amounts had been deducted for a total of $18k in withdrawals over 24hours.   Wimdu itself was absolutely useless but thankfully Paypal was a bit more on the ball and eventually all of the funds were replaced.

 

So the scammers used the familiar vendor name of Wimdu but actually where funneling the funds into some other account.   But at first glance seeing the familiar vendor name didn't suprise me and it wasn't until I saw the number of transactions, and the fact they were debits, not credits, that it clicked that it was part of the scam.

 

Anyhow, this is just to illustrate that this is all part of organized crime, and even though it was only a few hours, it will be important for you to check any site or any place where you use the same username, and of course if you used the same password for your airbnb login then you might use for anything else like a credit card or bank login, then change EVERYTHING.   In my case I probably had used the same password in paypal as wimdu, so even though the usernames were different, the robots figured it out.   I know use Last Pass and I change all my passwords every three months and of course am diligent about checking the urls to make sure it's the correct domain.

YES! I just received the same story and link. I thought twice about entering my password again because I knew I was logged in. 

 

I will report to Airbnb and Hopefully they can send out a warning about this - because i ALMOST entered my information too. 

 

Did you happen to see any probelms since it's been resolved with Airbnb?