"LIKE...OH MY GOD BECKY! Usher is coming to town to do a show, but where should we get the tickets? Ticketmaster?"
" NO Jaqueesha!... MAN GIRLLLLL, unless we have money like usher, we ain't buying no tickets from Ticketmaster!"
"But Becky...."
"Look girl, this money is for my nails!"
Have you had conversations like this? OK, maybe not exactly like this, but something like that. Well, I've got a hack for Ticketmaster that will let you upgrade your seats and, or, get you or your friends in for free.
Ticketmaster charges crazy fees for having to print tickets and drop them in the mail slot to send to you. But recently,Ticketmaster started offering something called ticketfast (which I like to call tickethack).This allows the customer to buy tickets for events on the Ticketmaster website, then they email a digital image of the ticket to you and all you have to do is print the image out and go to the event.
Well, what stops you from printing more tickets from the same image? There isn't anything. You can print as many copies of the ticket as you want. However, the ticket has a unique bar code on it that corresponds to a specific seat. Now, when you go to the event, using a custom PalmOS device they scan your ticket and that particular bar code becomes "used" after that. So, if someone has a second or third copy of your ticket, they'll be turned away.
What about the hack? Well, when they email your tickets to you they are formatted as a PDF file. Therefore, it is quite simple to manipulate them with Photoshop. You can change the Row # and the seat # but that still leaves you with the barcode problem. Now when you buy your tickets, you have the option of how close you want to be to the stage, with the closer tickets selling for more. And when your in the venue, many times they have ushers checking tickets at the seats to keep people that bought cheaper tickets out of the better seats.
OK. Lets say that there is a group of four people that want to go to a concert. (this is where it gets cool) What you have to do to abuse this little ticketfast idea is have one person buy a ticket close to the stage (which are usual more expensive) and have the other three people buy the cheapest tickets that they can possibly find. Now once the tickets have been emailed to you, create four copies of the expensive ticket and use Photoshop or any other photo editor to replace the bar codes on the three fake expensive copies with the bar codes from the three cheap tickets. And when your done you'll have four copies of the expensive ticket with four unique bar codes. And one last thing is to change the seat row's and numbers of the fake ones so that the ushers don't see four tickets with the same seat.
If you do this, it will allow you to get into the venue with a valid ticket according to the database and will fool the usher when you go to get your seat.
Can Ticketmaster fix this problem? Well, they can but it will be VERY difficult to do. Since each venue has different procedures of admitting people, it will be impossible to set up a standard procedure of admitting people who are using ticketfast. The only other thing that Ticketmaster can do is to drop the entire ticketfast option all together or completely change its control devices. So, until then, it's up for the taking.
Zimer
Thanks to Battery from 2600.
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