Shawn Parsons thought he had done his research.
Before he offered a lease for his Fells Point home to a prospective tenant, he reviewed her credit and checked her references.
But after that tenant wrote bad checks, sublet the place without permission and damaged the property, he wanted to warn other landlords not to trust her.
"If we could have found out anything about this, it would have saved us $17,000 and seven months of [those] people renting the property," Parsons, of Fallston, said. "It brought so much stress into our lives."
Parsons posted some details about his experience on donotrentto.com, a two-year-old Web site that compiles information about problem tenants so renters can make better decisions. For a $14.99 annual membership, landlords can search the database by name to gauge whether others have experienced problems with an applicant.
The Web site reflects how tenants and landlords are turning more to the Internet to check each other out. Apartment-hunters can also visit various Web sites for reviews of buildings and complexes.
But sites such as donotrentto.com also raise concerns among consumer advocates and tenants about potential misuse. Unlike credit reports, now routinely checked during the application process, such sites are not part of a regulated industry and lack an approved system for verifying claims and appealing inaccuracies.
"You just can't put things out there for people to slam somebody or mess somebody over," said Stephanie Cornish of Baltimore Neighborhoods Inc., a group that assists both landlords and tenants.
And privacy experts say this sort of Web site presents potential problems of misidentification or identity theft that are characteristic of the Internet age.
"We're creating all kinds of new information infrastructures but all too often without any checks and balances," said Jay Stanley, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Program.
Joseph Collins, the managing partner of donotrentto.com, said the site helps landlords protect themselves and their property.
The inspiration for the Ann Arbor, Mich., company developed after a group of landlords there met and realized they had similar problems with tenants.
"We said to ourselves, `We can't be the only ones going through these issues,'" he said.
