Trust is a difficult thing. And it’s even more difficult when your personal information gets compromised.

Everything you do online or on your phone almost always requires you to log in or make an account.

Generally, we don’t think twice about this, especially if we really want to go on the website but need to have an account set up first.

But what you might not realize is, when you sign up for a site, you’re actually sharing your personal information with it. That site now has your info saved somewhere in its database.

And at any moment, your information could be compromised by a hacker.

Cyber threats have been happening more and more. It seems like almost every few weeks, a high-profile company has its data breached. It’s become somewhat normalized, but it shouldn’t be. This is your personal information. It should be kept safe…

It’s Happened Again

Last week, event-ticketing company Ticketfly was added to the list of companies that have recently experienced cyberattacks.

Ticketfly has been working for over 10 years to build trust with its users, promoters, and agents. Unfortunately, with this recent hack, it looks like the company’s credibility could be dwindling…

The attack occurred last Wednesday night. It was then that a hacker hijacked Ticketfly’s website and stole data from an estimated 26 million customers.

Almost a week later, the company is still struggling to get its website back online. Some of its partnering sites are up and running again, but Ticketfly’s main site is still down.

Vice’s Motherboard reported that it had communicated with the alleged hacker. The hacker had requested that Ticketfly pay them 1 bitcoin. And in exchange, they’d promise not to share any information about Ticketfly’s website vulnerability.

But Ticketfly didn’t pay the ransom, so the hacker posted user data online.

This data may include users’ names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers. On the plus side, the company says users’ payment information and passwords weren’t stolen.

A letter from Ticketfly to promoters sent on Sunday night said:

For those of you with Ticketfly-powered websites, some of you are live on the temporary solution and more sites are continuing to go live by the hour. We apologize for not hitting the timing we communicated yesterday, but assure you that as your webpage goes live, you will be notified.

This attack on Ticketfly left many promoters and also music and comedy clubs in the dark for upcoming shows. There’s currently no way for customers to access Ticketfly’s website to buy tickets for these shows. It’s instead up to music venues and promoters to get the word out about how people can buy tickets for events.

That’s if there were another option to buy tickets. A lot of events were announcing free shows because they had no other way for potential customers to buy tickets. This was good news for people who got to attend these free shows, but it wasn’t good news for promoters. There are ticket sales on the line. And there’s no way of knowing how many tickets have been sold.

This hack comes at one of the most inconvenient times for Ticketfly. We’re in spring and approaching summer festival season. This is when people are looking to buy tickets to concerts and festivals. But because Ticketfly’s site is down, they can’t. Shows are losing out on potential sales every day that the site is down.

Ticketfly decided to take its site offline on Thursday morning, the day after the attack.

On Monday, Ticketfly posted that it was working diligently to get its system up and running again:

As things come back online we expect there will be some technical issues with certain functionality typical to bringing these types of operations back online. Thank you for your patience.

As the company slowly gets back online, there will be a lot of questions that Ticketfly will need to answer. Not to mention, the company will need to have a discussion with users and partners about how it’ll prevent future attacks.

More data is being kept online every day. And this means there’s an increasing risk of cyberattacks compromising people’s personal information. We need stronger cybersecurity, and we need it now.

Until next time,

Jennifer Clark
Pro Trader Today