Woman finds her own house listed on Airbnb

Rental company says scam was an ‘account takeover’ with a stolen password

A Philadelphia woman was left stunned when she found her own house had been listed by someone else as an Airbnb rental.

Molly Flaherty says she was shocked when she discovered four people trying to get into her home in the city last month.

She says that one of the group, Nicole Brunet, told her that she had rented the property on the platform for her parents who were visiting the city from California.

But Ms Flaherty had never listed her home on the property-rental site, she told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

And when Ms Brunet pulled up her Airbnb booking on her phone during the Christmas night incident, the address and the photos matched her home.

Airbnb eventually removed the listing after the fraud was reported, and said that it was a case of an “account takeover” where a scammer steals an Airbnb owner’s password.

And the company refunded Nicole Brunet the $1,000 she had spent on the reservation.

She told the newspaper that “there really was no way to tell” the listing wasn’t real and that it had more than 100 reviews and an average rating of 4.7 out of 5.

“It looked just like any other listing, which is kind of the most scary part about it. I’m just like, well, I can’t trust anything,” she said.

The company told The Independent: “Issues like this are rare, and we were disappointed to learn about it. We provided support to the guests at the time to help make things right, including a full refund, and have deactivated the listing.”

Ms Flaherty said that the company told her that it did not mediate disputes and encouraged her to reach out to the person who had listed her home.

“I continue to feel frustration that Airbnb considered me, the actual homeowner, a 3rd party which seemed to bear little to no consideration on their part,” Ms Flaherty told The New York Post.

“As a homeowner, there is no way to prevent this. I have had friends tell me after hearing of this they checked Airbnb to make sure their home wasn’t listed.”