Verify

Verify and validate customers globally using their phone number.

Velocity

Discover the network provider for every mobile number globally.

Authenticate

Protect customers, accounts, and transactions within your app.

Live

Discover if a mobile number is assigned to a subscriber.

Score

A real time phone number credibility score.

TeleShield™

Identify if a number has the propensity to be used for fraud.

Banks and Financial Services
E-Commerce
Insurance
Mobile Messaging
Gaming & Gambling
Communication and Service Providers
Identity & Verification Providers
eBooks
News
Developers
Viteza
FAQ
About us
Events
Careers
Contact us
Articles

Taylor Failure: how Thousands of Swifties were Stung by Ticket Scammers

Fergal Parkinson

6 min read
Person with arms raised in a concert-like setting, silhouetted against a vibrant background, adjacent to promotional text for an article on scammers targeting music fans.
  • Thousands of Taylor Swift fans stung by fake ticket scams on social media
  • The average amount lost in each rogue transaction was over £300
  • Scammers tricked desperate fans into making bank transfers – then disappeared
  • So is there a way to source tickets to sell-out shows safely? 

Her European tour, which starts next month (9 May) in Nanterre, France was already the hottest ticket of summer. And that was before Taylor Swift preceded it with the untrailed drop of a double album of new material last week, Tortured Poets Department – to an accompanying global media frenzy.

Yet even though she is booked to play the continent’s biggest venues across four months – including an unprecedented seven nights at London’s 90,000-capacity Wembley Stadium – there is still a huge disparity between available tickets and demand.

So it’s no surprise that it was tickets to Swift’s shows in particular which were highlighted by an investigation into rogue gig ticket traders on various social media platforms this month – as the bait used to trap thousands of fans.

Thousands fell victim to ticket scammers

Researchers at Lloyds Bank discovered that more than 600 of their customers have been left stung for amounts often running to over £1,000 after falling for scam ticket ads for shows like Swift’s – and estimate that across all bank customers, the number affected is likely to run into several thousand.

The average amount lost by each victim was £332 with fans aged 25 to 34 most likely to be targeted, with many scams originating on social media. Other artists whose shows were used to lure in victims included Beyonce, Harry Styles and Coldplay – with at least £1 million scammed in the fake sales.

The rogue ticket ads were posted on social media

So how were so many fans deceived?

These were what are broadly defined as purchase scams which particularly proliferate on social media.

This involves luring someone into making a purchase outside a conventional and regulated trading platform, persuading them to pay upfront, via direct bank transfer, to buy goods or services that are fake, shoddy or – like those Taylor tickets – which simply do not exist at all. The vendor then disappears, taking the victim’s money with them.

Fear of missing out is an opportunity for ticket scammers

These gig ticket scammers capitalise on the hysteria that accompanies ticket release frenzies by catching people whose desperation is at its peak – which often means that their judgement is at its lowest point. They think they have found relatively affordable resale tickets. They want to believe this. And then they act quickly – or as it would later transpire here – rashly.

And they do this because they are in the grip of so-called FOMO – fear of missing out.

How to avoid being scammed for tickets

What can fans do to avoid the double horror of missing out and losing hundreds of pounds into the bargain?

Well, in any transaction when there is a risk dimension it’s wise to pay by credit rather than debit card as you have a greater chance of recovering losses if things go wrong.

And never pay upfront for anything unless you are certain of the reliability of the person you’re paying.

But much more important than anything else is this simple rule of thumb: don’t buy stuff on social media. Just don’t.

Social media is littered with fake accounts

It’s long been a source of frustration for us at TMT ID – who specialise in mobile-based data intelligence and security – that social media companies have put apparent popularity ahead of user safety.

By this, I mean that they allow entry to their platform without applying even minimal scrutiny of who they are onboarding. This means that, say, Facebook Marketplace is no more secure a shopping experience than buying goods for cash in an actual marketplace in the roughest parts of the world. There’s no comeback because the platform doesn’t even know who these traders are, never mind the customers.

The problem could be solved with mobile number scrutiny

Were the social media companies to make a registered mobile number a requirement of sign-on, then a service like ours could tell in an instant which were bona fide and which were associated with fraud. And we could weed those out. But they don’t.

When Elon Musk was negotiating to buy Twitter – prior to rebranding it as X – he claimed that the proportion of fake accounts on the platform was as high as 20%, with even the company itself accepting a figure of 5%.

With this many rogues out there, it’s best to avoid trading on these platforms altogether. A Taylor Swift ticket may cost much more on a recognised resale platform – and the mark-ups there are a scandal in themselves – but at least you can pretty much count on receiving it.

Taylor Swift Concert Ticket Scam

How these kinds of scams are changing the way banks work

Meanwhile, Lloyds Bank also featured in another, apparently unconnected news story in media business pages this month – which I mention here because in fact there may be an oblique connection to that Taylor Swift ticket scam.

This was the story, first appearing in the Financial Times, that Lloyds is to significantly reduce the size of its risk management department – with redundancies and redeployments in the pipeline.

This was framed in these stories as being because some investors see attempts to analyse risk as being an obstacle to investment because they are seen as “blockers” – and this was weighed against the counter-argument that bad investments led to the 2008 crash and so it’s potentially reckless to take this step.

In fact, I suspect that the reason they are taking this step is that the nature of risk has shifted – and that the frontline way of assessing it is no longer via a paper researcher position but a digital one underpinned by tech.

In the same way that a fintech like ourselves could quickly identify those rogue Taylor Swift ticket outlets and block them – banks need a similar function for their transactions and new business.

It’s not so much that risk has disappeared – more that the form it comes in has changed.

And that’s put customers themselves in the firing line, as those poor Swifties found.

Last updated on September 18, 2024

Contents

Related Articles

Person with arms raised in a concert-like setting, silhouetted against a vibrant background, adjacent to promotional text for an article on scammers targeting music fans.

Taylor Failure: how Thousands of Swifties were Stung by Ticket Scammers

Promotional graphic for "the identity arms race" by peter taylor, featuring a stylized image of a woman sending a kiss, with a green and white abstract design on a dark background, addressing

The Identity Arms Race

Promotional graphic for an article titled "Delivering Effective Content in This Digital Age" by Denisse Enache, featuring a stylized representation of a document icon.

Delivering content in this digital age


"Were the social media companies to make a registered mobile number a requirement of sign-on, then a service like ours could tell in an instant which were bona fide and which were associated with fraud."

Read about our solution
What Our Customers Are Saying

"Phone number verification plays a critical role in helping to detect and prevent online fraud. TMT ID’s TeleShield product provides easy access to global mobile data, enabling us to enhance the actionable results of our MaxMind minFraud® services."

MaxMind

"BTS (Business Telecommunications Services) is successfully using TMT’s Velocity and Live services to check the status of mobile numbers. This way we make sure we optimize the performance of the service offered to our customers and ensure the quality of terminating traffic to all countries.”

Business Telecommunications Services

"Working with TMT’s TeleShield service has expanded our ability to detect fraud and minimise the risk to our business. TeleShield brings peace of mind and the opportunity to stop fraud before it affects our customers’ bottom line or the service."

Six Degrees Labs

"LATRO relies on TMT’s TeleShield to provide the most up to date and reliable numbering qualification information within our fraud reporting tools, enabling us to protect our customer’s revenues and empowering them to defend themselves against fraudulent numbers."

LATRO

"TMT is a valued partner that enables us to manage our routing costs effectively. They proactively and continuously expand their operator and country coverage while delivering exceptional customer service. We can always count on them to achieve high-quality results and look forward to our continued collaboration."

Global Message Service

"TMT provides us with the most comprehensive numbering intelligence data through their fast and reliable Velocity and Live services. TMT is a trusted partner for us, their products ensure that we continue to optimise the best performance and service to our customers."

Global Voice

"TeleShield from TMT gives 42com the power to detect and target telephony fraud scams internationally, thereby protecting our company from the financial and customer experience impacts of telecommunications fraud."

Alberto Grunstein - CEO

"It has been a pleasure to work with the team at TMT. They have become an essential provider of accurate numbering data information and Number Portability services globally."

Luisa Sanchez - VP of SMS and Messaging Solutions, Identidad Technologies

"Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier uses TMT ID as one of their key suppliers for Mobile Number Portability Data services. Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier uses TMT ID’s Velocity MNP solution. This is an ultra-fast query service that optimises the routing of international voice calls and A2P messaging."

Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier

Ready to get started?

We provide the most comprehensive device, network and mobile numbering data available

Contact us > Chat to an expert >