Fake online ticket sales are a major problem for consumers and businesses alike. Cybersecurity companies like ours are seeing an uptick in fake sellers online who have one main goal: to steal your money.
Whether you’re a consumer who buys tickets online or a business manager in charge of buying tickets for team-building events, it’s more important than ever to remain diligent when making purchases.
Are Fake Online Ticket Sales a Major Issue?
Santander’s warning in September of last year explained that the number of customers who were scammed with fake tickets for events more than doubled year-over-year. Offering a small sample size of the worldwide problem, the number of scammed customers rose from 789 to 1,905.
Consumers between 19 and 34 were the largest group to be scammed, accounting for 60% of all claims.
Scammers often sold tickets for real events, but many chose to create entirely fake events that people bought tickets to, such as:
- Festivals
- Sporting events
- Music concerts
Digital ticketing has exasperated the issue because, as the Better Business Bureau states, “every digital barcode looks the exact same.”
We’re not only seeing these types of scams on fake websites, but they’re also coming to social media. For example, the North Pole Express is notoriously difficult to find tickets for, and people are falling for Facebook scams selling them even though prices are drastically inflated.
How to Protect Yourself from Fake Online Ticket Sales
Scammers are resilient; if they can find ways to steal your hard-earned money, they will - you can be sure of it. But scammers also go after “low-hanging fruit,” which means that they want to find the easiest targets, get their money and move on to the next victim.
Even minor precautions on your part can make a world of difference and protect you from becoming a victim of online ticket sale scams.
You never want to do any of the following when buying tickets:
- Pay before you can see the ticket (if purchasing from a non-official site)
- Fail to research if the event is real and actually ongoing
- Transfer money for the tickets using a wire transfer
- Give sellers a prepaid card or gift card for the value of the ticket
- Trust online search results without looking at the URL and verifying that the seller is legitimate
If you follow just the points above, you’ll reduce your risk of falling victim to fake online ticket sales greatly. However, you can still take proactive steps to reduce your risks even further. For one, never meet someone in person who is selling tickets unless you bring someone with you and it’s in a well-lit area.
Verify that the seller is a real authorized seller and that all of their information is accurate.
Research sellers to see whether they’ve had any complaints. If you do pay for any tickets online, it’s always better to use a credit card because you’re more likely to win a dispute than if you use a debit card to make a purchase.
Cybersecurity firms recommend only purchasing tickets from reputable websites or through authorized sellers. If the price seems to be too good to be true, it probably is.