We’re planning a trip in December and want to stay in a rental home through VRBO. The home’s manager is having a third party send me an email in which they want me to send them a selfie of myself, and a photo of my driver’s license, front and back.
I’m very reluctant to do so. I’ve read their contract for wanting these, and there’s the usual crap about providing my “biometric data” to their associated entities, etc. It seems to me that this is a great way to give strangers the ability to steal my identity. I replied to their email that I’m not going to give them a selfie of me.
Is this a commonplace practice nowadays? We’ve rented through VRBO many times and no one has ever asked for my picture. If anyone feels insecure about renting to us, they need only look at our long rental record to see that we’re old folks who don’t party and always leave the home in great condition.
Good on you for being cautious. We’ve stayed a few VRBO properties over the past several months and none have asked for that kind of information. If they insist, I’d stay somewhere else. It’s possible they’ve been burned before and just want to be careful. It’s also possible they (or somebody else) are data mining.
I think it very unlikely they’ve set up a rental home for the purpose of stealing your identity. Most likely, they’re concerned with people renting under a fake name and having no way to seek recourse when something is damaged or stolen. It’s not (yet) common to ask for it, but it’s not unheard of.
But that doesn’t mean you aren’t right to be cautious. Don’t ever give that info away unless it’s absolutely necessary. I think you took the right approach in saying you won’t be provide it, and see what their move is. Maybe it’s their default policy and they’re fine waiving it for people with an established rental history on the platform.
If they come back saying it’s required, then you get to decide just how perfect this property is versus finding another choice without that requirement.
Frankly, it is becoming so easy to find personal information sufficient to perform identity theft that it really isn’t worth this kind of effort, especially by a home owner to which such information—especially reuse of a ‘selfie’—could be tracked. Individual owners can’t see your record of VRBO rentals so they have no idea how ‘reputable’ you are, and frankly whenever you check into a hotel they check your id, and some hotels have even taken to scanning your provided i.d. for verification if you aren’t already in their system. I’m a strong advocate of protecting your personal information to the extent possible but this is a sensible precaution for individual property owners to verify that you are who you claim to be.
Does VRBO itself not already have this information? I believe that airbnb has an actual photo of me as well as a photo of my driver’s license for this exact purpose, and actual hotels generally take down a from of ID as well.
If VRBO is not doing ID verification on behalf of property owners, then it’s not out of the realm of “normal” for the individual property owner to do so themselves.
When my daughter rented a car through the car “sharing” service Turo, she had to provide a selfie and photos of her drivers license as well. It was a way of verifying that she was who she said she was in case she absconded with the car, I guess.
I would be hesitant to give a VRBO owner scans of my DL since I don’t know what they are going to do with it and how they are going to protect the image. A corporate hotel likely has extensive policies in place as to how this kind of info is handled and protected. Joe Owner on VRBO is probably doing some kind of ad-hoc method that he came up with on his own, like saving copies on his out-of-date Windows 7 computer that his kids use for browsing sketchy websites. However, I might consider giving them a scan with the important info blacked out, like DL number, birthdate, etc. That way even if someone gets the image, it won’t really be usable.
They certainly do. Hilton and Marriott, for instance, sells or provides information about your stays and purchases with third party vendors and services so they can spam the ever-loving fuck out of you about using their shit while you are in town, and have also experienced numerous data breaches in recent years.
This is it. It’s like getting a credit check through a credit agency, or a criminal record check through a criminal record checking agency. Or having to get your identity verified through ID.me in order to access certain federal websites.
I guess there are multiple parties involved here, to wit:
Owner of property. We don’t communicate with them at this stage.
VRBO. They handle all the booking and financial part, and we have an account with them. They have all the relevant data on us, including our credit card info and our history as rental tenants.
The management company who manage many properties, especially in the area where we’re going. They’re the ones who take care of the property and respond to complaints or problems.
A security/insurance company, who contract with the manager to take care of security and insurance issues with the tenants. They’re the ones who worry that you’re a jerk who’ll throw wild parties, invite a lot of undocumented tenants and damage the property, and who’d have to pay out if you trashed the place. They’re the ones who want pictures of me and my driver’s license.
I’ve emailed the management company and told them I’m not providing anyone with my photo, and they responded that it’s not necessary. I told them that I’ll just ignore the security/insurance company’s email request, then.