Who is Airbnb and Why Do They Want So Much of My Personal Informaiton?

I have recently had my first encounter with Airbnb and will have to admit this will not be a positive comment. I believe investor caution is appropriate. Blame it on my browser or lap top software vintage but my wife and I spent more than an hour attempting to reserve two nights at an apartment on the New Jersey shore. After confirming by email with the owner that they were small dog friendly, we were directed to establish an account with Airbnb to complete the reservation. Simple right? Wrong. With trite e-mail explanations about why additional data beyond my credit card number and key code were needed, Airbnb proceeded to ask for copies of our drivers license and connections to social media we utilize such as Facebook, LinkedIn and others. We then received a flip response that we under utilize the social media services and they certainly can not confirm scenery. We happen to have a picture of both of us with our bikes with Acadia Nation Park in the background for our Facebook profile picture. We were now multiple e-mails into this transaction for which we had to establish a password and were discovering we could not convince whoever was on the other end of the line that we're were who we presented ourselves to be. It did not help that the Airbnb web pages had glitches and presented a labyrinth of dead ends when attempting to reenter the system after fetching the required additional information. If you do not have an account because you have not satisfied someone's interpretation of what constitutes proper identification then you get stuck and have to start over. Next we were informed that because it is so important to make sure we are the same people in the photos we sent, we now needed to create a video in which we were instructed to identify ourselves and state where we lived. To do this we were required to change our lap top internet settings to allow external audio and video access. A specific instruction require us to check the "Remember settings" box or the process could not proceed. At this time we started receiving nag e-mails indicating we only had 12 hours to run this gauntlet before the pending reservation would be cancelled. Mind you, the rental owner had already indicated through e-mail that we were ok. We made the 30 second video and checked the upload button fully believing the note on the page that indicated the process would only take a couple of minutes. What they doing we may never know but 30 minutes later with the little upload icon spinning we had no confirmation. However, we had additional nag e-mails from our second sign on attempt demanding more personal information and another warning the 12 Hour cancel clock was still running. We actually gave up and shut down assuming we did not make the grade and were reconsidering our trip. Some time later that morning we received an e-mail congratulating us on completing our transaction. We contacted the owner to confirm this was in fact true. During our stay, we were surprised to hear that the owner also had a similar experience when listing the rental in the Airbnb system. I do not know about you but I get nervous when people I do not know ask for personal information, especially more than seems reasonable without a good explanation as to why so much is needed other than they are still not satisfied. May be it is because they are not connected like large retailers or the government. I was able to get credit cards, a passport and global entry card without the same level of interrogation. And why would they insist on the "Remember settings" selection for the audio and video devices? Since the encounter, I went into my browser and multimedia settings to undo the Airbnb required settings. Like I said this was not a positive comment, consistent with my Airbnb experience. Based on this, I would recommend that potential Airbnb investors look for clear plans from Airbnb detailing how they will improve their software, begin using existing data sources for personal info to spare their customers the pain and wasted time and explain how they will prevent loss or misuse of the hoard of personal data they are accumulating. Failure to address these issues, in particular personal data protection, could drive a quick end to this venture.