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Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

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Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#421

Post by bagels »

lmm wrote: post #397
bagels wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also happens that pranksters can cancel your travel if your boarding passes make it on to Twitter or other social media. It's not a non-problem like you make it out to be. Sure, it won't happen to you or me, because we know it is a risk to expose these documents, but that is not true of most people. Maybe the DRM is not worth it. I actually think it's obnoxious for concert tickets (I recently had to deal with this…

> It also happens that pranksters can cancel your travel if your boarding passes make it on to Twitter or other social media. The security theater of checking ID does nothing to stop this. What's your point?

My point is that rotating expiring barcodes actually can provide some security value.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#423

Post by mixmastamyk »

tesrx wrote: post #417
deamanto wrote: post #409

I'd also like to highlight another bad practice by Ticketmaster. When you purchase a ticket from them and resell it on their marketplace, once someone purchases it, they(Ticketmaster) hold your funds and only give you the money ~7-14 business days after the event is over. They say this is to verify the validity of the ticket. On the buyer side, you purchase the ticket from the marketplace and it gets added to your ac…

Excellent point. I wonder if Ticketmaster profits by making interest off of holding those funds?

Wonder no more—yes.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#424

Post by grishka »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #412
guhcampos wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy here just means you can use it to sell your ticket without using their platform, which is analogous to just sending someone the PDF or handing over the piece of paper as always. While this has the upside of breaking you free from TM's obnoxious practices, it also obviously opens up for scalpers and all.

Scalping is still possible without understanding the tech - you could just stream a video of the bar codes and sell the stream instead of selling the ticket.

Good luck getting enough signal to play a video stream in a large crowd.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#425

Post by cbsmith »

chrisrhoden wrote: post #379
cbsmith wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 think you can probably re-read and understand that their entire post is about the fact that Ticketmaster hosts, processes, and charges fees on resale tickets. 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 s…

> I think you can probably re-read and understand that their entire post is about the fact that Ticketmaster hosts, processes, and charges fees on resale tickets.

Yup. I misread the comment.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#426

Post by cbsmith »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #398
cbsmith wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Actually, TicketMaster was involved in each transaction. Let's revisit the first paragraph: "TicketMaster is taking massive fees each time the same ticket is sold." I'll lay it out in detail so it's more clear: TicketMaster sold the original ticket to the scalper. Then the scalper listed the ticket on TicketMaster's secondary market. Then I bought the ticket on TicketMaster's secondary market and TicketMaster collect…

Yes, I misunderstood what you wrote.

There are plenty of scalpers who sell tickets outside of TicketMaster, despite their best efforts. Do you think the $50/ticket fee that you paid would have been lower if you'd done your transaction outside of TicketMaster's platform?

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#427

Post by citruscomputing »

pompino wrote: post #344
immibis wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Asking if a person or a company is good or bad isn't a question that can ever have a well-defined answer: the answers we give are rounded according to our own values. Counterexample: Was Hitler bad?

Good/Bad are consensus votes. Its hard to escape their use just because of how deeply ingrained the programming is. We just think it makes "sense" and is "obvious" because its a meme that is already in our head. There is nothing inherently evil or good about any past/present/future animal on this planet.

I hate this website.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#428

Post by jamisonbryant »

> "Screenshots won't get you in"

I'd say this highly depends on the fastidiousness of the ticket taker and the rules of the venue. I purchased Major League Baseball tix recently through my employer which uses a 3rd-party seller site that has restrictions like this (a moving graphic behind the barcode with the admonishment not to take a screenshot because it won't work).

I was unable to attend the event that night so I sent my wife a screenshot of the ticket. Two tickets, in fact. They were taken with zero issue.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#429

Post by bonestamp2 »

deamanto wrote: post #409

I'd also like to highlight another bad practice by Ticketmaster. When you purchase a ticket from them and resell it on their marketplace, once someone purchases it, they(Ticketmaster) hold your funds and only give you the money ~7-14 business days after the event is over. They say this is to verify the validity of the ticket. On the buyer side, you purchase the ticket from the marketplace and it gets added to your ac…

There's another good point in here. Why do they hold the ticket until just before the event? I bought tickets to a concert for my wife's favorite band. Then, my wife's work scheduled an event for that same week and she had to leave town. So, what I really wanted was a refund so someone else could buy the tickets. They don't do that of course. So, then I wanted to sell the tickets for face value... but ticketmaster didn't "deliver" the tickets to my account until the day before the event!

I watched for a month leading up to the event as the ticket prices plummeted while the scalpers were desperate to get at least something for their tickets before my ticket was even delivered to me.

As soon as they take my money, they should update the database to show that the ticket is mine. If I want to sell it, I should be able to do that immediately too.

But, from what I've read, that instant resale ability only belongs to their "partners" who resell a lot of tickets, and you need access to their "TradeDesk" tool to do it: https://tradedesk.ticketmaster.com

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#430

Post by grishka »

torcete wrote: post #174

A $COACH_COMPANY in the UK has recently announced that they are moving to only app-purchased tickets. Except tickets purchased directly from the driver, which is VERY expensive. Well, F.U. $COACH_COMPANY. I don't want to have to install your app for that, but I guess I won't have any other option if I need to get to the airport.

What is one supposed to do if they don't have a smartphone and/or an internationally accepted bank card?
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