Scammers took advantage of concert series ticket shortage The Eras Tour of Taylor Swift and hacked Facebook accounts in order to defraud fans of the singer by selling them non-existent concert tickets.
Perhaps they are among the fans left empty-handed and furious after the crash of Ticketmaster which was selling tickets for the tour The Eras Tour in July 2023? The fact remains that some customers who would have sold their souls to get a concert ticket fell into the trap of a Facebook page, as desperate as they were at not having found their precious ticket on the first try.
And it was a double punishment that they were inflicted upon realizing that they had just been scammed by a fake online ticket office. Our British colleagues from the BBC report the frustration of many fans, who criticize Facebook for not having blocked the hacking of accounts which offered tickets for the tour without their owners’ knowledge The Eras Tour by Taylor Swift, which is due to appear in June and August 2024 with our neighbors across the Channel. For its part, Malwarebytes, a specialist in cyber protection which reports the facts, warns against these scams that we see too often on Facebook.
Scam that cost Taylor Swift fans £1m when fake tickets were sold
Victims of identity theft on Facebook testify to the BBC. One of them laments that her friends lost 300 pounds sterling (around 350 euros) after buying fake tickets using her hacked Facebook account. This type of scam is unfortunately widespread on Facebook. Hackers create a clone of an account, or simply hack an existing account, and broadcast with false publications to deceive or scam subscribers.
In this case, these were posts or messages offering concert tickets for the tour The Eras Tour by Taylor Swift. Tickets which, of course, did not exist, against payment from the victim, him very real. Apart from the financial damage suffered by the victims, the owners of the hacked accounts feel shame towards their friends, and above all great frustration towards Facebook, which did nothing to act quickly, despite numerous reports. victims of account theft. It took several reporting attempts with the tool offered by Facebook, coupled with numerous emails sent directly to Meta, including Mark Zuckerberg, for the fake account of one of them to finally be deleted.
Lloyds Bank estimates that the amount of losses due to this phenomenon, amplified by Facebook’s lack of responsiveness, amounts to 1 million pounds sterling, or approximately 1.6 million euros.
How to avoid getting scammed by fake accounts on Facebook
This type of mishap experienced by British Swifties had already taken place in the United States in 2023, with a fraud campaign having generated more than 200 complaints from fans defrauded of up to $2,500 (around 2,300 euros) for a single ticket .
Malwarebytes points out that concerts are not the only subject of scams. Typically, every sold-out event generates a scam attempt selling fake tickets, mainly on Facebook. “ It’s easy for scammers to create a fake website that looks authentic. Some even use a website name or URL similar to the legitimate site. […] It is equally important to keep in mind the power of AI which has taken the creation of a photograph of – fake – banknotes to a level that makes it child’s play », We can also read in the publication.
But it’s just as easy to guard against these scams, or at least sniff out them, even when you’re a fan and desperate to find a closed door on an official ticketing site. Malwarebytes compiles a list of checkpoints and red flags to help you distinguish between an official ticket and a scam. For its part, Clubic gives you some advice to avoid giving in to the temptation of the parallel offer proposed by one of your friends on Facebook.
First of all, if you see that one of your friends publishes an offer on his feed that is too tempting to be true, and it seems unusual for him, it is probably because he is the first victim of theft of his account. Notify them using a channel other than Facebook. Then, don’t click on the post, but on the name of the Facebook account in question. Typically, cloned accounts only display one or two posts. Block them and report them.
Finally, and of course, do not give in to the temptation of an offer that is too tempting to be true, whether with a publication from a subscriber account or an advertisement on your Facebook feed, just like the sponsored results appearing among the first results on search engines which may be fraudulent.
Source : Malwarebytes, BBC
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