Thus by the time this reservation was confirmed and I was given Dj’s email address and phone number, I was on a plane heading East, and he/she was armed with my welcoming instructions on where to pick up the keys to my apartment. We have been working closely with the authorities, and we want to reassure our community that, with the help of our security infrastructure, we were able to assist the police in their investigation, and we understand from authorities that a suspect is now in custody. We’ve created a marketplace built on trust, transparency and authenticity within our community, and we hold the safety of our community members as our highest priority. We will continue to work with our users to stamp out those who would put that community at risk in any way. With a single booking, one person’s malicious actions victimized our host and undermined what had been – for 2 million nights – a case study demonstrating that people are fundamentally good. Update: I spoke with Brian Chesky. The host herself acknowledged our efforts in a blog post when she said: 
 
 “I would be remiss if I didn’t pause here to emphasize that the customer service team at airbnb.com has been wonderful, giving this crime their full attention. They have called often, expressing empathy, support, and genuine concern for my welfare. They have offered to help me recover emotionally and financially, and are working with SFPD to track down these criminals.” 
 
 While we’re glad that our host feels this way, we are committed to improving upon our product with safety as the cornerstone of the Airbnb marketplace.
– It's been quite the up-and-down week for Airbnb, a start-up that helps people rent their homes to vacationing strangers. All began great when the company secured a $1 billion valuation, notes the Wall Street Journal. Then a PR disaster: A San Francisco woman blogged about how she returned from a week's vacation to find that her Airbnb guest had thoroughly ransacked and pillaged her apartment, reports TechCrunch. "They smashed a hole through a locked closet door, and found the passport, cash, credit card, and grandmother’s jewelry I had hidden inside," she writes. "They took my camera, my iPod, an old laptop, and my external backup drive filled with photos, journals … my entire life." It gets worse; read the post in full here. Airbnb's CEO Brian Chesky has promised to go "above and beyond" to help the woman and to ramp up safety protocol, and he says police have a suspect in custody. But, writes TechCrunch's Michael Arrington: "It turns out that when something like this happens, Airbnb isn’t financially responsible."