Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

conduition.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 737 posts

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#431

Post by Arrath »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #372
orbillius wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

900mhz networks like halow or even lorawan should do Even at huge venues i dont expect requests would be over 5 rps

5 RPS, per scanner, surely?

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#432

Post by dclowd9901 »

noodlesUK wrote: post #27

This sort of ticketing thing is a trivially solvable problem. It is solved at every airport in the entire world millions of times per day. You provide the name of each concertgoer when you buy a ticket, and they show up with their ticket and ID. You often need to show your ID at these kinds of venues to prove you're old enough to drink beer anyway.

I’ve heard the argument that forcing people to have an ID is anti folks with disabilities and anti-poor since it requires someone to go to an issuing agency to obtain and pay for one, which could be putting someone out who has a mobility disability or doesn’t have a lot of money.

I’m not making the argument but it’s an argument I’ve heard.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#433

Post by throwaway2037 »

noodlesUK wrote: post #27

This sort of ticketing thing is a trivially solvable problem. It is solved at every airport in the entire world millions of times per day. You provide the name of each concertgoer when you buy a ticket, and they show up with their ticket and ID. You often need to show your ID at these kinds of venues to prove you're old enough to drink beer anyway.

I agree, mostly. What do you do for people without an ID (and without a parent)? Think of the number of people at a Taylor Swift concert who are under 18 -- a lot. Also, checking the name between ticket and ID will slow down entrance by 2-5 times, I guess.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#434

Post by Ocha »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #429
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 di…

Just vote with your pocket and don’t buy tickets from them. I do that - yes I don’t get to go to major concerts but there are still so much more that is not on ticket master. I found a lot of new entertainment and was happy to pay $4 fee instead of whatever TM charges nowadays.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#435

Post by [deleted] »

yard2010 wrote: post #332
ikesau wrote: post #14

Really good post! I also found this quote which distilled their position in the 404media coverage of the situation. > “What I can say for sure is that TicketMaster and AXS have had every opportunity to support scam-free third party ticket resale and delivery platforms if they wished: By documenting their ticket QR code cryptography, and by exposing apps and APIs which would allow verification and rotation of ticket s…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#436

Post by Loughla »

Ocha wrote: post #434
bonestamp2 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 di…

Just vote with your pocket and don’t buy tickets from them. I do that - yes I don’t get to go to major concerts but there are still so much more that is not on ticket master. I found a lot of new entertainment and was happy to pay $4 fee instead of whatever TM charges nowadays.

That's the secret.

If nobody used them, they would go away.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#437

Post by mattmaroon »

Loughla wrote: post #436
Ocha wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just vote with your pocket and don’t buy tickets from them. I do that - yes I don’t get to go to major concerts but there are still so much more that is not on ticket master. I found a lot of new entertainment and was happy to pay $4 fee instead of whatever TM charges nowadays.

That's the secret. If nobody used them, they would go away.

Our options shouldn’t be see no concerts from successful musicians or pay monopoly pricing. This is something government should solve.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#438

Post by mixmastamyk »

TylerE wrote: post #328
lmz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I experienced this first-hand last year when I attended another very popular concert where they used a similar rotating-QR-code-ticket system. Numerous people including myself and my friends were floundering at the entry gate citing a bevy of broken barcode problems. That's a different system. The article makes it clear that the Ticketmaster system works offline if you have opened it on the mobile app. Which they d…

You don't even have to use the app. You can just visit the ticketmaster website and add it to apple wallet straight from there. Can do it months in advance, too.

The website comes up in Safari, and is scannable from there. Don’t need to add to wallet. I used box office wifi to get text and follow url.

I never asked for this BTW, would rather have a paper ticket.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#439

Post by jagged-chisel »

yard2010 wrote: post #332
ikesau wrote: post #14

Really good post! I also found this quote which distilled their position in the 404media coverage of the situation. > “What I can say for sure is that TicketMaster and AXS have had every opportunity to support scam-free third party ticket resale and delivery platforms if they wished: By documenting their ticket QR code cryptography, and by exposing apps and APIs which would allow verification and rotation of ticket s…

[flagged]

Hash chains already existed. But someone created blockchain anyway.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#440

Post by shiroiushi »

mattmaroon wrote: post #437
Loughla wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the secret. If nobody used them, they would go away.

Our options shouldn’t be see no concerts from successful musicians or pay monopoly pricing. This is something government should solve.

Expecting the US government to properly handle monopolies and anti-trust issues is a fool's errand. It's like saying the US government should solve the issue of gun proliferation in the US: it's simply not going to, in our lifetimes.
Post reply on HN