Eventim warning after hackers target Eras tickets

Eventim has temporarily postponed the resale for the German dates of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour after hackers attempted to steal digital tickets for the concerts.

Swift will visit Germany this summer for sold-out concerts at Gelsenkirchen’s Veltins-Arena (17-19 July), Volksparkstadion in Hamburg (23-24 July) and Munich’s Olympic Stadium (27-28 July). Her European tour launches in France tomorrow (9 May) with the first of four shows at Paris La Défense Arena.

According to Heise, cyber criminals are believed to have gained access to user accounts by trying out usernames and passwords from data dumps on the darknet, known as “credential stuffing”, before offering the tickets for resale on Eventim’s FanSale platform.

Eventim, which contacted the police over the matter, says the number of unauthorised resales was in “the low double-digit range”, while the transactions identified as fraudulent have since reversed, and the buyers refunded.

“By using Eventim.Pass with exclusively digital tickets, on the one hand, the identified, abusive transactions were reversed,” a company spokesperson tells Watson. “On the other hand, the funds of the buyers of the stolen tickets were secured from being forwarded so that they can be refunded.”

Eventim says it has reset the “passwords of accounts that we classify as potentially at risk”

It has reset the “passwords of accounts that we classify as potentially at risk”, and is encouraging other users to follow suit.

“As email and password data was used that has very likely been in circulation for some time, we recommend that users first change their email password and then the password for their customer account,” advises the firm.

Elsewhere in Europe, it was reported last month that UK Swifties are estimated to have lost over £1 million (€1.2m) in a wave of online scams since tickets went on sale for the European leg of The Eras Tour last July, according to data from Lloyds Bank.

Meanwhile, a so-called Taylor Swift bill has been signed into law in Minnesota, US, to offer online ticket buyers more transparency and protection. AP reports the law, which will apply for concerts or other live events held in the state, will require sellers to disclose all fees upfront and ban resellers from selling more than one copy of a ticket, among other measures.

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Written by IQ Magazine