How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight
josecasanova.com
How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight
1–10 of 127 posts
Re: How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight
#2The "TL;DR" at the top of the post is completely different than the actual content of the post.
Re: How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight
#3The "TL;DR" at the top of the post is completely different than the actual content of the post.
Fixed
Re: How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight
#4Just tried this myself and it definitely makes a difference. Thanks for the tip.
Re: How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight
#5No need for VPN - same result can be achieved (at least on this flight) by toggling the country manually to Canada.
Re: How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight
#6changing your user agent also works in some websites (not sure about kayak though)
protip: don't let them know you have a mac book pro
Re: How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight
#7This sounds quite familiar to the manipulation Orbitz did in 2012 based on the user's reported operating system:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/25/orbitz_displaying_...
Re: How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight
#8Does source IP address make a difference when searching fares on ITA Software's Matrix[1]? To my knowledge, ITA Software is where Kayak and many of the other booking sites get their data, so it's normally what I use when searching for flights. Since they don't actually sell tickets, I've always assumed I'm seeing "neutral" results, but now I'm curious.
Re: How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight
#9Does source IP address make a difference when searching fares on ITA Software's Matrix[1]? To my knowledge, ITA Software is where Kayak and many of the other booking sites get their data, so it's normally what I use when searching for flights. Since they don't actually sell tickets, I've always assumed I'm seeing "neutral" results, but now I'm curious.
Re: How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight
#10The price descrimination that the airlines do is so opaque and manipulative, this is exactly why one needs to be cognizant of the technicals. We are really only a single logical step removed from a pretty bad place (read: racist/sexist/elitist, etc) with this teqnique to dynamic pricing and (essentially) ... front-running.[1] For example, we can charge black people more (based on zip-code demographics) to discourage them from flying first class. We could, if we wanted to, require PII prior to bidding on tickets. Imagine if the NYSE priced publicly traded equities in this manner? The irony of cutting out the middle man to reduce costs, is that at some stage, we may be paying an intermediary (broker/marketmaker) to anonymize our order flow to get "fair" prices.
[1] This is what it really is, lets be honest.