Online ticket thefts target Taylor Swift fans. Here's how to protect yourself.
Taylor Swift Eras Tour concerts tickets don't come easy, or cheap. For fans of the superstar who manage to snag tickets, the thought of losing them never crosses their mind. But that's exactly what's happening to Swifties nationwide as hackers target Ticketmaster accounts, stealing customers' tickets for resale on other sites.
"It was like that gut punch," Morgen Bernius, a Maryland mom, told CBS News national consumer correspondent Usher Qurashi in describing the moment she discovered the Taylor Swift tickets she purchased for her daughter had suddenly disappeared from her Ticketmaster account.
"The tickets are gone — gone," said Bernius, adding that she could cry just thinking about it. "It was devastating," she added.
Ticketmaster won't say how many people have had their tickets stolen, reported Qurashi, but accounts of ticket theft similar to Bernius' have rippled throughout social media over the past month. "I woke up and my tickets had been 'successfully' transferred," said another theft victim, using air quotes.
"The No.1 tip I could give to fans to protect themselves is to make sure they have a secure, unique password, that they are not using on other platforms," Kaitlyn Henrich, head of global at Live Nation Entertainment, parent company of Ticketmaster, told Qurashi.
Asked if the company has failed its customers, Henrich added, "We are constantly striving to look at what's going on and improve the experience."
For now, that experience includes a 48-hour average wait for fans to have their tickets restored after notifying the company of their disappearance. As an added precaution, Ticketmaster is limiting ticket transfers to 72 hours before Eras Tour concerts and requiring two-factor authentication for some transactions.
"It's a very small percent, less than a tenth of one percent," said Henrich, "but obviously for that one fan who's going through that, it's a really stressful situation."
Online ticket thefts also hurt those who unknowingly purchase tickets that had been stolen.
Karen Perry, who paid more than $4,000 for two seats on StubHub to see the Eras Tour in New Orleans, got an email from TicketMaster just weeks before the show informing her that her tickets were stolen and would be returned to the original buyer.
"The tickets that were transferred to you were acquired by someone who was attempting to steal tickets. As a result, they have been cancelled and returned to the original ticket holder," the letter read.
"My heart dropped, like, my stomach sank," Perry told Qurashi. "Like, I was at work and I instantly started crying."
StubHub says Ticketmaster never informed them about the customer thefts, which it only found out about through media reports.
"I think that if there was a world where, for example, we would see Ticketmaster be more collaborative, or more transparent, about the problems they're having, and how they're attempting to solve those problems, we could be a partner in that effort," Laura Dooley of StubHub told Qurashi.
What you can do to protect yourself
Experts say there are several steps ticket buyers can take to reduce the odds of getting ripped off.
- Check early and often that your tickets are still in your account and haven't been transferred.
- Buy from sellers who offer replacement or refund guarantees.
- Take screenshots of all of your purchases.
As for Perry, who unknowingly purchased stolen tickets off of StubHub, she was able to find new seats with the help of the company, and was able to catch Swift in action in mid-October.
"We just had the best night of our entire lives," Perry said. "Hands down. It was better than our wedding. It was so good."
