Canada’s Hankook Ilbo: Online tickets purchased disappear
Miriam Estrella bought tickets to a Montreal Kennedys hockey game on Ticketmaster, but when she checked her account again, the tickets were gone.
Estrella, who currently lives in Florida, said she asked Ticketmaster for help, but the company took no action until she made it public on her TikTok account.
Ticketmaster commented on his video and said his ticket had been restored. But Estrella wasn’t the only victim of this data breach.
Miriam Estrella bought tickets to a Montreal Kennedys hockey game on Ticketmaster, but when she checked her account again, the tickets were gone. CBC
Last July, Ticketmaster emailed customers notifying them of a data breach that was first confirmed in May. It said at the time that the stolen data may have included credit card and contact information.
Ticketmaster said this week that no passwords were exposed in the data breach and has not confirmed a link between the data breach and the loss of tickets.
But technology columnist Kami Levy says there is a connection. He said hackers can match data such as email addresses to previously compromised passwords to see which accounts they have access to.
“They can use that access to sell all the tickets on that account, pretending to be the legitimate owner of that account,” he said.
To prevent this, he said, you should change your passwords, add two-step verification, and use a password manager to keep your accounts secure.
He also warned that using the same password on multiple sites would be tantamount to giving the master key to hackers.
Ticketmaster said its online ticketing has resulted in a significant reduction in fraud compared to the days of paper tickets and PDF copies.
He explained that digital records can be used to investigate the situation and recover tickets if there is a data breach.
Ticketmaster said in a statement that because tickets are valuable, they will always be a target for hackers, adding that it is constantly investing in new security enhancements to protect consumers.
