Recently South Africa has seen a recurring prevalence in cyber-crime, with online ticket scammers continuously taking advantage of unassuming consumers.
In the past few months, South Africans have been blessed with a plethora of international acts – the likes of which include Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran and Andrea Bocelli.
It has also been a busy time for festival-goers, with AfrikaBurn, Rocking the Daisies and the South African Cheese Festival tickets going on sale.
Primarily, tickets are sold through official resellers – but there are a host of third-party ticket sales that take place between one individual and another.
While there are those who buy tickets for events when they go on sale with the sole intention of reselling them at a profit, resellers are usually made up of people who are forced into selling their tickets because they can no longer attend the event.
Ticket scammers are constantly on the lookout for vulnerable targets. PHOTO: Tashin Singh
Among these sellers are online criminals who pose as ticket holders, accompanied by fully-fledged Facebook and/or Instagram profiles.
These fake profiles lure consumers in by offering them the chance of buying a ticket, only for the seller to disappear with the money, leaving the buyer with no sign of an official ticket.
A recent victim of a ticket scam and a Stellenbosch student, Sarah*, points to desperation in trying to get a ticket before they’re all sold out as a way for scammers to tempt you.
“Normally people who are looking for tickets for these types of events are in quite a rush because tickets are selling out fast,” she says. “Basically, scammers offer you a ticket that is usually cheaper [than other tickets].”
These cybercrime tactics are very prevalent—being used by Gumtree sellers and email phishers alike. Even so, people are still falling victim to these crimes, and on many occasions losing large sums of money.
In light of this, there have been players entering the market offering a solution to the problem. One such company is TicketPony.
Akhona Simelane, a director at TicketPony explained to MatieMedia how the company works.
“TicketPony is a secondhand ticket resale marketplace, that allows buyers and sellers of spare or secondhand tickets to avoid the risk of scams and to safely transact with one another.
“It’s happening informally on Facebook and Gumtree at the moment and that’s the danger – scammers see how desperate people are to buy or sell tickets and they take advantage.”
According to Simelane, TicketPony has been in partnership with the festival Rocking the Daisies, and utilises a three-step process in ensuring safe transactions.
“We use social proofing and verification – the Facebook login gives people an assurance that who they are transacting with is genuine (you can check to see how many Facebook friends a seller has) and mobile number OTP’s to verify the authenticity of a user by their mobile number.”
“Very importantly, we have a streamlined integration with Quicket, which allows us to invalidate a sold ticket and issue a new barcoded ticket to the buyer. This eliminates the risk of fake tickets, or tickets being sold multiple times, because once it is sold on TicketPony, the old barcoded ticket ceases to exist, and new one is created.”
“No bank details or other personal information is shared between users (in fact, some of the information is encrypted even for us), there is no risk of that data being used for nefarious purposes.”
Zethu Gqola, who heads marketing, PR and social media at Rocking the Daisies, affirmed the success of TicketPony.
“Since we partnered up with TicketPony,” he says, “the numbers have been reduced significantly (from the hundreds to single digits). We have hardly had any reported incidents of ticket fraud since we have put these measures in place and made customers aware of their options”
Here are seven tips and warning signs to look out for from TicketPony, to help you avoid this pertinent threat.
Tip #1: Buy secondhand tickets only from reputable or officially-endorsed third-party resale websites
TicketPony being one of them. This should be the first call of order, but of course, this is not always possible.
Tip #2: Scammers often create a sense of urgency in potential buyers for tickets (“get them now before they’re gone”) and provide very little information on price, dates and concert-specific details.
Gqola says that “scammers don’t seem to not know exactly what the ticket entails or means (or the correct naming conventions) – that is a usually a red flag”.
She also encourages potential buyers to be wary of the price the ticket is being sold at.
“Anyone selling the ticket for suspiciously high or low prices compared to the purchase price of that item [should be treated as a red flag].”
Tip #3: Scammers will often ask you to text them on a different platform – moving the conversation from Facebook to WhatsApp, for instance.
Simelane warns of the danger in the conversation becoming isolated, which Gqola attests to, saying fraudsters will likely try to lure you to Whatsapp.
Sarah’s experience illustrates this point.
“He private messaged me on Facebook and said I should speak to his friend Walter Smith on WhatsApp.”
Tip #4: Check the social profiles of sellers
Fake profiles can usually be identified through a lack of interaction with other people on their page. Suspicious profile pictures (that aren’t consistent with other pictures on their page) should be looked out for. Mutual friends are usually a good indication of authenticity.
Sarah says she “noticed something dodgy on his Facebook profile, in that he had commented on various other people’s profile pictures offering an AfrikaBurn ticket”
Tip #5: Don’t accept photographs of tickets as proof.
These photos are usually fake and have been circulated before.
In the case of Sarah, she had been sent a photo of an official ticket from Quicket with the barcode blurred.
Tip #6: Never give out any personal information to a stranger
This includes email addresses and ID numbers.
Tip #7: If you feel uncomfortable at any point during a transaction, don’t go through with it. It is not worth it.
If you have an uneasy gut feeling or uncertainty about the legitimacy of the deal – rather seek an alternative than expose yourself to a potential scam.
*Sarah has requested to remain unnamed throughout this article.