As the world retreats from American-hosted providers in a post-Snowden whisleblown world, I got an email from one of my favourite U.S. services, AirBnB. If you're not familiar, AirBnB allows you to rent out an extra room in your home, or your entire place, for one night or as long as you'd like.

I read about it a few years ago, when an enterprising young woman in San Francisco claimed to make the equivalent of a salary from renting out her extra room.

As I travel a lot, I realized this would be a great way to offset my mortgage costs, so I put it up right away. It took some time to realize what an appropriate price was in my area, and I discovered I get about $30/night less during the week than on weekends.

This is generally a better alternative to Craigslist in my experience for several reasons: you can choose as long as you want at any given location, you can clearly define a unique policy, and you get amazing insurance coverage you couldn't get elsewhere.

It wasn't until travelling with a partner a few years ago that I really started to use it to stay at the locations of other hosts. We got keys to our own furnished place in Manhattan for $80/night, when hotels are usually +$300/night in the area. This offering is so disruptive to businesses, New York City has since banned residential short-term stays that are less than 30 days.

Years later, I'm writing this from a place I found on AirBnB, and my condo is rented out to an AirBnB guest. I've been perhaps AirBnB's greatest Canadian advocate, at least until now.

I went to renew my stay at this cute little condo when I was told that AirBnB has partnered with some other American company, Jumio, and now required a copy of my government-issued identification.