So, I’m travelling to Portugal in a few days and the woman that owns the apartment we‘re staying in is asking for our personal information via a Google Sheet.
The info includes Passport number, full name and nationality, date of birth, and checkin/checkout date.
Is this legitimate? She said she needs it for standard reporting reasons to the authorities.
I‘m just wary that inputting my passport etc into a google sheet seems like a fasttrack to identity theft!
IT professional here. As noted in the other answer, the request is legitimate, so let's break down whether this is a "secure" way to do it.
The first question is security of transit: is your information secure from eavesdropping? In short, yes: any data you input into Sheets is securely sent over encrypted HTTPS (lock icon in browser) and safe from eavesdroppers, and this is in fact a much better way to do it than, say, sending everything by unencrypted email.
Second, is your data secure at rest; in other words, can you trust Google not to leak your data to others, either intentionally or to hackers? On the hacker front, Google has some of the best security in the business, and as for bundling up and selling your data to third parties, Google unambiguously states that this will never happen for data in Sheets. Whether you should trust them on this is another question, but rest assured, a lot of people, companies and regulators would be very, very upset if they ever broke this promise.
Finally, is your data secure from access? This is the real weak link: ultimately the apartment's landlord controls who gets access to that sheet, and there's nothing really stopping them from sharing it with their cousin, their friends or the world. However, this will be the case no matter how you provide the data, whether it's by Sheets, fax or photocopy.
All that said, in your shoes I would still probably push back and state that I will happily show ID on arrival. This worked fine for me when we rented an apartment in Lisbon for a short stay last year, they just copied the IDs on the spot. The images still likely ended up in Google/Apple Photos, which is not great, but still preferable to having them sitting around in a juicy sheet full of everybody's else IDs, which could be easily downloaded and sold off in bulk.
In order to let property in Portugal to paying guests, all premises must be licensed under the terms of an ‘Alojamento Local’. Property owners and licence holders are required to comply with the conditions of the Alojamento Local. This includes a requirement to record the entry, exit and identification details of all non-Portuguese nationals staying having paid for accommodation, within 3 days after they arrive and 3 days after they leave. Failure to comply with the regulations can result in significant fines and penalties.
However, you should be offered a secure means to provide this data. https://www.safecommunitiesportugal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Local-Lodging-seminar-SEF-presentation-21st-April-2015.pdf If I were you I would ask the owner to confirm how the Google sheet process provides you with security.
