00:00 Many people are very desperate to get tickets and they are, I think, starting to troll through
00:06 social media, they're looking online, trying to see what's available, and sadly that is
00:10 exactly where the scammers are lurking. So they are basically posting, you know, fake
00:15 profiles, they are saying they have tickets to sell when no such tickets exist, and people
00:20 are sadly falling for that.
00:22 Are there any other examples of how this is working?
00:26 I think the critical thing is that the scammers are really very good at trying to suss out
00:32 where are people's vulnerabilities. So they know that there aren't very many tickets available,
00:37 they know that people are desperate to attend, and so what they're trying to do is actually
00:42 put themselves in front of people who have cash to spend. They are creating profiles
00:47 themselves online, so for example, they may impersonate one of your friends, they may
00:53 then pose as that friend saying, "Oh, it's really sad, I can no longer go to the concert,
00:58 and who would like to buy my tickets?" So they really try to get in front of people
01:02 in a trusting way so that they can gain your trust and then get access to your cash.
01:08 And so how are they impersonating friends? Are they actually, for example, creating a
01:12 Facebook profile with a photo that they've picked up, which of a friend of someone that
01:20 they know is looking for a ticket?
01:22 Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes this will come from very standard Facebook profile impersonations.
01:29 So many people may download a photo of you online, start to put out a profile, and try
01:34 to hook in as many people who believe that that's an actual profile, and then simply
01:39 posting notices that they have tickets available. Other people will actually perhaps engage
01:45 with you, maybe over Facebook Marketplace, for example, and what they want to do is then
01:50 get access to your personal information. They may ask you to send along a piece of ID to
01:55 prove or to go along with your credit card details. They will then use that identity
02:00 in other forums in order to scam other people.
02:03 Ah, right. And will they also use your details to buy other goods and not just dupe you out
02:10 of the Taylor Swift tickets?
02:12 Absolutely. Once they've got your information, they can go wild with it. And in some cases,
02:18 they can actually use your genuine photo to pose as you and almost then hook other people
02:25 in and they think you're the one that's scamming them.
02:28 Yeah, it's so easy to get sucked into this, isn't it?
02:30 Correct.
02:31 So what are the key messages for people not to get sucked into these?
02:37 The number one message is that there's only one authorised reseller, and that is the Ticketek
02:42 Marketplace. So if you are desperate and you're really wanting to get Taylor Swift tickets,
02:47 you've got to be looking on that site. Don't trust anything else. If it's too good to be
02:52 true, it definitely is. You don't want to be giving your money to a stranger online,
02:57 even if you think that it's someone you can trust.
02:59 And yes, scammers love big events like this.
03:02 Absolutely. There's big money in this. You know, I was saying to someone earlier, it's
03:07 not the same as, you know, down the pub $20 event. This is big ticket cost and thousands
03:13 of people are looking for tickets online. I read one report that said that at any given
03:18 moment on the Ticketek Marketplace, there can be 50,000 people looking for tickets.
03:23 So even getting through that, there's a long line up. I was on today just trying to see
03:28 what it looked like. Even getting past the door and into the marketplace is actually
03:32 very challenging.
03:34 And Lisa, are you a Swifty and have you already got a ticket?
03:39 I don't have a ticket. I was not, when tickets went on sale, I was sort of saying, I'm not
03:44 really a Swifty, but now I'm actually really excited about it. And I think maybe I should
03:49 have gotten one as well.
03:50 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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