Is it possible for ex-cons to book through Airbnb?

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Is it possible for ex-cons to book through Airbnb?

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I imagine it would be. They lose their right to vote; not their right to travel. The only exception I can imagine is if they are on a sex offender list as it would be difficult to determine proximity to banned places such as schools and parks.

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They are only ineligible to vote as long as they are on probation and of course while they’re in prison.

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If the user is in the US and gets verified through Airbnb, Airbnb does perform a background check. What they do with this information, I’m uncertain.

Where permitted by applicable law, we may also provide information from your government ID, such as your full name and date of birth, to our service providers to run checks against public records for criminal convictions and sex offender registrations. For now, these checks are limited to users in the United States about whom we have adequate identifying information, such as the user’s full name and date of birth. While we believe these checks help us deter fraud and misuse of our services, they don’t guarantee that interactions with people who book through Airbnb will be safe or problem-free.

Edit: Thanks for the question. When I signed up for Airbnb, I was under the impression that no background checks were performed.

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Yes ex-cons can book through AirBnb. So can currently active criminals of all categories. AirBnb’s “background checks” and “verifications” are automated, marginal at best, and are certainly nothing that I would consider a background check.

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It’s interesting how they use the word “may,” as in they may perform background checks. If I’m reading it correctly, it means they have the ability do background checks on US users, if they want, but they might not.

Perhaps it could be another level of verification they could offer. It could make some hosts more comfortable about using IB…

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I suppose they could if hosts were prepared to pay for this as an additional service.

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I might be wrong but if my calculations are more or less correct. I’ve been using Photoshop since Brian Chesky was seven years old. So it wouldn’t take me long to make fake ID documents that would be good enough to pass muster at Airbnb’s non-existent checking procedure.

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I can hear an experiment crying out to be tried…

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In fairness to Airbnb; on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, CA you can get a fake passport that is good enough to fool TSA in much less time than it takes to get a real passport.