Some Ticketmaster customers have found hackers have accessed their accounts and stole their tickets for events. NBC4’s Carolyn Johnson reports for the NBC4 I-Team on Monday, Oct. 28, 2024.
Jennifer Smith and her husband were supposed to take their 10-year-old son Greyson to an Imagine Dragons concert last week.
But the morning of the concert, she logged into her Ticketmaster account and the tickets were gone. It appeared someone had hacked into her account and swiped them.
“Sure enough, the tickets we had purchased for a very expensive price were claimed by somebody named Codie Lee,” Smith said.
A family friend offered an extra ticket to Greyson, a die-hard fan of the band. And Smith’s husband bought another ticket to join them. But the family is out the $1,200 they paid for their original tickets.
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“Our heart sank. A day that was supposed to be celebratory, almost like a holiday, was stressful,” she said.
Ticketmaster customers across the country have shared the same experience with NBC.
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“Between 4:16 am and 4:20 am, they took my tickets and successfully transferred them to themselves,” said Jess in Philadelphia.
“My tickets are gone. I said somebody just took them out of my account,“ said Brenda in suburban New York.
Ticketmaster experienced a data breach this summer. But it told customers that all accounts were secure and passwords were not compromised.
In a recent interview with NBC in Chicago, the company blamed the ticket theft on weak customer passwords.
“And if you haven’t updated your password recently, or if you’re using a password you use in a lot of different places, they might be able to get into your account,” said Dan Wall, an executive vice president at Live Nation, Ticketmaster’s parent company.
In a statement to the I-Team, the company doubled down on that, and said security issues often originate with personal email accounts. It encouraged its users to create strong, unique passwords for both their email and Ticketmaster accounts.
It also said digital ticketing has greatly reduced fraud.
As for Smith, Ticketmaster said it’s looking into her case. She wants her money back, but she said she was robbed of something even greater – creating a memory with her son.
“My son had a great time. I’m happy for him. But I would have loved to be there with him,” she said.
Tips to keep your tickets safe:
- Change your Ticketmaster password. Choose a strong and unique one, something you’re not using anywhere else.
- Update the password on your personal email account, as well. Again, choose a unique one.
- Make sure your cell number is linked to your Ticketmaster account. The company says you’ll receive a two-factor authentication request if someone tries to transfer tickets from your account.
