Ticketmaster faces lawsuits after the ticketing site was hacked and a great deal of personal information and data was sold and leaked to the dark web.
MIAMI, FLORIDA – NOVEMBER 18: In this photo illustration, A ticketmaster website is shown on a computer screen on November 18, 2022, in Miami, Florida. The Justice Department is reportedly investigating the parent company of Ticketmaster for possible antitrust violations, this follows the news that Taylor Swift concert ticket sales overwhelmed the Ticketmaster system. (Photo illustration by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
By Maliyah Simone, CRDN
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
Ticketmaster issued a notice to its customers on July 1st that the site had experienced a monumental data breach between April 2 and May 18th, 2024.
A data breach of one of the largest ticketing sites in the world poses significant threats to consumers. In order to purchase tickets for events, customers must provide sensitive information such as card numbers, billing addresses, and even information about age and license number.
The notice stated that “an unauthorized third party obtained information from a cloud database hosted by a third-party data services provider,” leading to more than 1,000 customers having their personal and financial data stolen.
According to a filing with the Maine Attorney General, the data was listed for sale on the dark web for $500,000.
The ticketing site has been in the news lately due to site crashes after fans of both Beyonce and Taylor Swift swarmed to get tickets to the two artist’s recent tours. The crashes resulted in financial losses for fans who were waiting in a queue for payment processing only for the site to shut down without distributing their tickets.
Although this was a separate issue, it left fans wondering if Ticketmaster being the only authorized seller for the tour meant that the company demonstrated monopoly-like processes.
After the data breach, Ticketmaster reached out to their customers and offered a credit monitoring service at no charge so that customers would have some relief from the stress of not knowing whether or not their personal accounts and credit is safe.