Ticketmaster pauses transfer of Taylor Swift’s Eras tickets amid reports of hacks and theft

This is why we can’t have nice things.
With less than a fortnight before the final leg of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour begins, Ticketmaster has paused ticket transfers for all remaining shows until three days before each event. The move comes amid reports that fans have had their accounts hacked and tickets transferred without their knowledge.
Emily Breslin had tickets for one of the Toronto Eras shows. She was looking forward to flying into the city from Philadelphia until last week, when she received an email from Ticketmaster informing her that her tickets had been successfully transferred.
Breslin quickly logged in to her account to verify that the email was legitimate and discovered that it was — her tickets had been stolen and transferred to a “random suspicious email,” she said.
Breslin spent some time talking to the ticket-selling website’s chatbot to no avail, then contacted its fan support number. After waiting for more than an hour and a half to speak with an agent, her request was forwarded to the company’s fraud division, and she was told she’d hear back when the issue was resolved.
There were many others in her situation on social media, Breslin said, including some fans who had been waiting weeks for a resolution. It prompted one of her friends who had a “pretty big following” on TikTok to make a video detailing the situation.
Shortly after, Ticketmaster returned the tickets to Breslin, but her problems were far from over. Several days after the company told her that the issue had been resolved, she again noticed that her tickets had reverted to being transferred to an alleged hacker.
As of Breslin’s last conversation with the company, she has been told that her “tickets will be ready prior to event — anytime after 7 p.m. on (Nov. 20),” which is three days before her show.
Gabby Murillo of Chicago, who is planning on travelling to Miami for a show later this month, had a similar experience.
Murillo’s sister — who had bought tickets for them — found that her tickets had also been stolen, she said, so she reached out to Ticketmaster on its multiple platforms, including by chatbot, over Twitter and by phone. She finally got her tickets back and received an email from Ticketmaster saying the issue had been resolved. However, Murillo said, at the same time the transfers were paused, she again lost access to the tickets. 
Now, the company has told Murillo that she will have to wait until three days before her show to have her tickets returned.
Ticketmaster has confirmed that it is pausing ticket transfers until three days before each show, but has not confirmed whether the decision to pause the transfers was in response to the reports of theft.
“Overall, our digital ticketing innovations have greatly reduced fraud compared to the days of paper tickets and duplicated PDFs,” a spokesperson for Ticektmaster told the Star via email. “Having that digital history is also how we are able to investigate the situation and restore fans’ tickets. The top way fans can protect themselves is setting a strong unique password for all accounts – especially for their personal email which is where we often see security issues originate. Scammers are looking for new cheats across every industry, and tickets will always be a target because they are valuable, so Ticketmaster is constantly investing in new security enhancements to safeguard fans.”
Regardless, for fans like Breslin, that move is too little, too late.
She said that the company should have “halted the transfers a while ago and done things like put in two-factor authentication for simply logging in, but certainly for transferring any tickets.”
In July, Ticketmaster had informed its users that it had been the target of a data breach earlier this year in which they said some users’ names, contact information and payment card information may have been compromised.
The Eras tour will be returning Oct. 18 when Swift takes to the stage in Miami. She will be heading to Canada next month with six shows in Toronto and three in Vancouver in December.