371–380 of 737 posts
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No, I have flight tickets autoupdate when there is a delay.
I've only seen the flight data change, not the code itself.
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I doubt the second bit is true - they will still be marking the ticket as used in their backend. They are just trying to prevent scalpers printing off tickets 10 times and selling them outside the venues as a scam, which happened at every large concert I have ever been to until recently (so I assume this is working!).
> they will still be marking the ticket as used in their backend. I assume that's true, but it makes me wonder how their scanners are connected to the server. I mean, if 10,000 people showing up to an event with smartphones overwhelms wireless networks, wont that also kick their scanners off the network? They'd probably like to have a system where, if a scanner loses its connection, it can still validate tickets. It…
Even at huge venues i dont expect requests would be over 5 rps
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What is the worst that can happen? I have it installed on my iPhone and deny whatever permissions it asks for. I have enough confidence in the sandbox that "installing an app" is basically never an issue (though I don't out of the principle that most things companies have apps for just shouldn't be apps).
> What is the worst that can happen? I don't know the worst, but juice is not worth the squeeze in my opinion. If you recall, Ticketmaster was just recently hacked, so the worst pretty much happened in that any data they had collected on their users is potentially been leaked. So if they can't protect that data, then I'm not participating in giving them data.
Nice reverse engineering! As a hacky way for the non-tech-savvy, couldn't you use a temp account to create ticketmaster account and then buy the ticket and then sell the temp account information to bypass their rules? This reverse-engineering also breaks if ticketmaster forces venue staff to only scan if the barcode is in the ticketmaster app. Unless you create a lookalike app to trick the staffers.
I once paid at Starbucks with the Apple Wallet barcode appearing in a photo of my phone displayed on the back of a DSLR. Plopped my not-remotely-iPhone-like Nikon D800 on the counter lens-down, LCD-up, barista scanned it without a second thought.
I am sure this is pointed out elsewhere, but ticketmasters business model is based on lying to the public so that the artists and venues don’t have to. Taylor Swift is a nice-ish person and wants her fans to think they can buy tickets for her shows at about 25 bucks because that’s a lot of money for a 12 year old and she does not want to alienate her fans. Her manager is an evil cackling bastard and wants to get as m…
I recently purchased tickets via SeatGeek and was provided a link to one of these barcodes, which accepted as a querystring parameter an access token that seemingly had a long expiration attached to it. It was hosted on “downloadmytickets.com”, which doesn’t look legitimate and caused me to do this same type of analysis to see how it all worked. Whether or not this was a way to bypass the “security” to enable sale vi…
I don't know about the specific site you mentioned, however the large broker platform Automatiq runs a number of domains like this, where they effectively proxy the original ticket token, recreate it with TOTP just as in this article, and display it to any user who has the right link in a similar format to how TM displays it. They advertise this service as "Transferless Delivery" to their ticket reseller customers. The main Automatiq one is called "secure.tickets".
It reduces work for sellers, because they never even have to transfer the tickets out of their Ticketmaster account anymore. Of course, it's horrible for buyers because they have no idea whether the random website link they were sent is actually going to serve them a barcode corresponding to a real ticket or not, or whether the site will be up, and they have no rights to the ticket as far as the primary ticket issuer (TM) is concerned, buyers don't even know the name on their own tickets.
Seatgeek and StubHub seem to be aware of these systems because of how closely they work with ticket brokers, and just coach customers to accept them if they are from any of the domains known to them. See https://support.seatgeek.com/hc/en-us/articles/2074030716443... the Automatiq site is called out specifically on that page.
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It's interesting how the real problem here is that our economic system has no way to sell a product at what the seller will bear, only what the buyer will bear. I think this is a fascinating feature, a lot of artists would be more than happy to make $X for a show so that their fans can come see them. The problem ends up that a free market has no mechanism for that, the artist can sell the tickets such that they end u…
The scalper provides no value to the market The scalper allows the devoted fan who is gladly willing to pay $X+N to actually get a ticket rather than having to wake up at 6am and repeatedly refresh the site and probably still not get one. I find market failures like this fascinating because it really shows the limits of how "free" markets operate. How would central planning handle this better? There are more people w…
If we agree that scalpers are a problem, we can make it illegal to resell ticket over the original price. Enforcement is always a problem, so to help with that it could be required to have an ID matching the ticket name and resell can only be performed on official platform.
To grantee having a ticket with this system, a wealthy or connected devoted fan can have private arrangement with the artist manager or event organizer to get tickets.
Nice reverse engineering! As a hacky way for the non-tech-savvy, couldn't you use a temp account to create ticketmaster account and then buy the ticket and then sell the temp account information to bypass their rules? This reverse-engineering also breaks if ticketmaster forces venue staff to only scan if the barcode is in the ticketmaster app. Unless you create a lookalike app to trick the staffers.
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I can't confirm what they said, but TicketMaster does have a "partner" reseller program for scalpers where they have tools to help scalpers list and manage resale tickets in bulk. They also have events where they help teach scalpers how to make more money, which is good for TicketMaster since it makes even more money on secondary sales. Ticket scalping used to be illegal, and now TicketMaster is helping facilitate it…
> Scalping aside, TicketMaster is taking massive fees each time the same ticket is sold. For example, I went to an event last year and the fee was $50 on each ticket, and these were reseller tickets so TicketMaster had already taken a fee on each of those tickets at least once already (perhaps more than once). So your evidence is that you were charged a $50 fee on a separate transaction that didn't involve TicketMast…
I know that you already know this, based on your other posts on this thread.
The technology referenced in the post above is, at least in part, to prevent you from reselling the ticket without involving TicketMaster. That may be justified as a way to prevent selling the same ticket more than once, but it’s certainly the case that this is one of many possible approaches, and it’s the one that most favors this business.
It would probably be criminal for the company to act any other way, so I’m not claiming any evil doing here.
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> Flying requires an ID. Attending a concert should not. Why though? Not disagreeing per say because I'd have thought so too, but upon reflection... I assume the main reason airlines require an ID is safety and security. We maintain a denied parties list and use identity verification to make it as difficult as possible to fly a plane into a crowded venue. Border control is another issue, but there's plenty of intra-c…
Is your argument that people should be unable to attend concerts/etc without presenting ID? I for one am not a fan of that idea
I'm also probably overly discounting border control. Traceability in particular. I'm not a fan of this either.