Airbnb hosts, New York City passed a law to take your data
The short-term home rental service is now required to submit your data to the city.
New York City passed a bill Wednesday requiring short-term home rental services, including services like Airbnb , to hand over host data to the Office of Special Enforcement.
Some of that data, which the city wants every month, includes name, physical address, phone number, email and profile URL of active hosts. It also wants the total number of days the property was rented, and the fees that were paid.
Offenders failing to comply will be subject to fines "more than the greater of $1,500 or the total fees collected during the preceding year by the booking for transactions related to the listing." Yes, confusing, we know.
The move comes amid Airbnb's escalating spat with the city which blamed the company for increasing rent prices. The bill was announced hours after Airbnb said it will financially back a lawsuit filed by one of its hosts in Brooklyn. The city had imposed hefty fines on the host for using his basement as a hotel and failing to comply with fire codes.
"After taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the hotel industry, we're not surprised the City Council refused to meet with their own constituents who rely on home sharing to pay the bills and then voted to protect the profits of big hotels," Airbnb's spokeswoman Liz DeBold Fusco told CNET in an email.
"The fix was in from the start and now New Yorkers will be subject to unchecked, aggressive harassment and privacy violations, rubber stamped by the City Council," she added.
First published July 18 at 11:32 p.m. PT.
Update, July 19 at 7:26 p.m.: Adds comment from Airbnb.
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