Scammers gonna scam scam scam, so before hunting for your tickets to a Taylor Swift gig or other in-demand events, learn how to stop fraudsters from leaving a blank space in your bank account
Thanks to advances in technology, buying tickets to your favorite show has probably never been easier – as long as you can sometimes endure virtual queues and you’re not a Swiftie, of course. On the other hand, it’s also never been easier for fraudsters to subvert the process and abuse the names and images of the rich and famous in order to insert themselves into the buying process for their own gain.
Although Ticketmaster, StubHub and other ticketing companies are taking significant steps to make this harder – for example, by encouraging mobile ticketing – there are always opportunities for the bad guys to cause “bad blood”.
Take some time to familiarize yourself with the following top five Ticketmaster scams and how to shake scammers off when hunting for tickets.
You might encounter variations on any of the below. Be on your lookout for:
These are spoofed to appear as if legitimate Ticketmaster site or official partner/trusted seller, complete with official logo and branding. However, on closer inspection they’ll be hosted at an inauthentic domain. Sometimes the difference may be just a letter or two and hard to spot.
Oftentimes, scammers will send you a phishing email, text or social media message encouraging you to visit the site to buy tickets for a sold-out and/or upcoming show. These phishing sites may even be SEO-optimized in order to push them up search rankings, so that they appear at the top when you look online for the official version of the site.
Either way, the end goal is the same: to harvest your Ticketmaster logins and personal and card details. The former can be used to hijack your account (see later).
What happens when the show you desperately want to see has sold out on the official Ticketmaster site? You might turn to social media, often Facebook Marketplace, or third-party sites like StubHub or Craigslist. But beware.
Often, scammers advertise fake tickets on these sites. They’ll likely post photos of real-looking tickets to draw you in, and offer them for sale at an unbelievably low price. Sometimes they hack legitimate social media accounts to do this.
They’ll pressure you into full payment – likely by bank transfer, Zelle, Venmo, etc. or even gift card. And sometimes they’ll promise to meet you in person at the show to hand them over. Of course, there is no ticket.
This is a variation on the schemes above. Scammers create fake websites featuring a fake support number to contact in the event of an issue. These will also be optimized to appear at the top of search results when you’re looking for a customer support number.
Alternatively, the scammers may call you direct, or send you phishing emails claiming there’s a problem with your purchase and requesting you to call them. They will sound professional and courteous over the phone, all the while working out a way to trick you into handing over personal/financial and/or account details including log-ins.
Scammers look for individuals reselling their tickets online, who have posted pics of those tickets. Then they replicate the ticket, including barcode and/or QR code, and resell it as many times as they can. Only the buyer lucky enough to be the first through the door will get in – the others will be left out in the cold.
This isn’t technically a scam but can result from one, if you’re unfortunate to fall for some of the above tactics and hand over your logins to a fraudster. Alternatively, they may be able to crack your account if you reuse the logins across other sites (one of which has been breached), or use easy-to-guess logins which can be “brute-forced” by password-guessing software.
Once they gain access to your Ticketmaster account, scammers could buy tickets in your name and/or send purchased tickets to themselves. If that happens, it can be difficult persuading ticketing sites that you have genuinely been the victim of fraud – so do your best to keep that account secure in the first place.
Follow these simple rules to steer clear of Ticketmaster scams:
If you do end up as the victim of a scam:
Ticketing scams are, of course, not confined to Ticketmaster. Follow the same advice, whatever platform you’re a customer of.
