Ticket scams are very common and apparently hard to stop. When there are not nearly enough tickets for some concerts to accommodate all the fans that desperately want to be there, it makes for ideal hunting grounds for scammers.<\/p>\n
With a ticket scam, you pay for a ticket and you either don\u2019t receive anything or what you get doesn\u2019t get you into the venue.<\/p>\n
As reported by the BBC, Lloyds Bank estimates that fans have lost an estimated \u00a31m ($1.25 m) in ticket scams ahead of the UK leg of Taylor Swift\u2019s Eras tour. Roughly 90% of these scams were said to have started on Facebook.<\/p>\n
Many of these operations work with compromised Facebook accounts<\/a> and make both the buyer and the owner of the abused account feel bad. These account owners are complaining<\/a> about the response, or lack thereof, they are getting from Meta (Facebook\u2019s parent company) about their attempts to report the account takeovers.<\/p>\n Victims feel powerless as they see some of their friends and family fall for the ticket scam.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter I reported it, there were still scams going on for at least two or three weeks afterwards.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n We saw the same last year when \u201cSwifties\u201d from the US filed reports about scammers taking advantage of fans<\/a>, some of whom lost as much as $2,500 after paying for tickets that didn\u2019t exist or never arrived. The Better Business Bureau reportedly received almost 200 complaints nationally related to the Swift tour, with complaints ranging from refund struggles to outright scams.<\/p>\n Now that the tour has European cities on the schedule the same is happening all over again.<\/p>\n And mind you, it\u2019s not just concerts. Any event that is sold out through the regular, legitimate channels and works with transferable tickets is an opportunity for scammers. Recently we saw a scam working from sponsored search results for the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. People that clicked on the ad were redirected to a fake phishing site where they were asked to fill out their credit card details.<\/p>\n Consider that to be a reminder that it\u2019s easy for scammers to set up a fake website that looks genuine. Some even use a name or website url that is similar to the legitimate website. If you\u2019re unsure or it sounds too good to be true, leave the website immediately.<\/p>\n Equally important to keep in mind is the power of AI which has taken the creation of a photograph of\u2014fake\u2014tickets to a level that it\u2019s child\u2019s play.<\/p>\n No matter how desperate you are to visit a particular event, please be careful. When it\u2019s sold out and someone offers you tickets, there are a few precautions you should take.<\/p>\n\n
How to avoid ticket scams<\/h2>\n
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