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Comment by nodata | Hacker News Reader

Nice, but I'd like to see a couple more things:

* Verification by credit card as a feature on profile pages - I would wager that credit cards are a better trust metric than facebook profiles. I'd like to see it count for something on a profile page.

* A balance between opening up a lot of personal data to stay at someone's place and sharing it with the whole world - I'd like my profile photo and video profile to be hidden from search engines. Only hosts who I want to stay with should be able to see it.

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You can steal a credit card, but it'd be more difficult to steal an active Facebook profile and keep it for any period of time. Fake Facebook profiles aren't easy to build up, and you'd have to be really malicious to go through the trouble. It would eliminate the "just for fun" aspect that many of these perverted abusers would enjoy.

I'm glad they are deemphasizing Facebook profiles for established users. I don't feel comfortable sharing details of my life with Airbnb hosts.

It's also going to make it pretty hard to get started if you don't have a Facebook profile I would imagine. Thankfully I already have positive reviews through a dozen-ish stays on AirBnB or I would probably be screwed since I'm not on Facebook.

Fake facebook profiles are actually pretty trivial to build up and can be done in about a week (I wrote a paper where I did just that last year). The meth addicts that seem to be taking advantage of ab&b would probably make the effort.

4chan users make troll facebook accounts all the time. It can't be that difficult.

its really not, I don't know what that guy is talking about. Its actually quite easy to create fake profiles, and fake networks, and add friends that would match that information.

It would take you a really long time to fake a profile - and it would take an extended amount of effort. Unless you have a specific target in mind, how easy is it, really, to create a credible network of 300+ friends?

In any case, I will bet you $1.14 USD that I can find a credit card number faster than you can generate a facebook profile that's credible.

i'm not going to bet you, but as someone who does have several profiles.. i know from experience.

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