Using torbrowser-install-4.0.6_en-US.exe installed 4/1/2015 with no modifications.
http://airbnb.com is a wildly popular vacation rental business which is illegal is many jurisdictions in California which regulate transient occupancy of rentals less the 30 days. The policy of airbnb.com is that anyone should be able to rent their house or room that wants to. To that end, airbnb.com will not reveal the address of listing making enforcement by local jurisdictions problematic.
When tor is used to access airbnb.com, the results are:
Stay tuned. Error code: 503
We’re experiencing some unexpected issues, but our team is already working > to fix the problem. We’ll be back up and running shortly.
If you need help from our customer service team about an ongoing reservation, please call us. During this time we reserve our phone number for emergency situations only, so please keep the lines open for travelers and hosts who need immediate attention. If it isn’t an urgent matter, please visit our Help Center for additional information. Thanks for your patience!
Check our Twitter account for updates. You can also swing by our blog. For urgent situations please call us
Yet, at the same time if I use regular browsers, e.g. Firefox or Chrome, the main page renders without a problem.
Question: Can web sites detect a TOR browser and then takes steps to defeat access? It appears from my effort to anonymously browse airbnb.com that such is the case. Is this a matter of configuration the Tor browser to allow certain activities such as Flash or other dangerous compromises to a browser? The fact that the error code is an http error code, e.g. 503, it suggests that something more than browser configuration is afoot.