A Boston man arrived at Game 2 of the World Series, only to find out his $650 ticket had already been used. It turns out someone had stolen the ticket after he had posted a picture of it on Instagram.
Robbie Johnson got tickets to Game 2 of the World Series and made a social media post of it like most of us would, but he included the ticket's barcode and identifier in the public Instagram post. This was enough for someone to steal the ticket (likely having found it from searching the hashtag or location) and create a duplicate, after which they scanned themselves into Fenway Park, rendering Johnson's original useless, which he found out when he arrived with his sister.
The suspected scammer was never found, as they never actually sat in the seat. Johnson was able to get a replacement ticket for $450, and while that's certainly quite the setback, I have to admit he's probably lucky he was able to get one at all, particularly to such a high-level event that was undoubtedly sold out. Johnson has since made his Instagram account private and says he won't post such things again, but it's an important reminder about privacy and social media.
I traveled to Chicago last week, and I used a boarding pass which was downloaded from the airline's app. I would assume one could do a similar thing with a game ticket such as this. The person who saw the instagram post possibly was able to download a copy of the game ticket. Why are some people so willing to share details of their life. He might as well post a photo of his credit care front and back for all the world to see.If some people are that desperate for attention they have no one to blame but themselves when these things happen, that my sound insensitive but that's how I see it. Why isn't it enough to say "hey I got tickets to the game" and leave it at that
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Nah. But then some people wouldn’t believe him and would want to see the proof. That’s why people constantly proving it by taking pictures of where they are and what they eat.
I'm going to leave the keys to my car in the ignition with the engine running, and my address is written on a note pad on the dash board, go ahead drive to my house and take everything, I deserve it.
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And put this message on Instagram!
what i find appalling is that he was made to pay an extra $450 for replacement tickets? I'm sure it would've been easy to prove he was the original buyer of the tickets.
But there was still an extra person in the stadium because of what happened.
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I believe there is a difference between someone trying to con the system and someone being an idiot but clearly not trying to deceive or take advantage of the situation. Can you imagine the amount of good publicity on social media the stadium could've had if they just helped him as they realise he was just a fool who got scammed without his knowledge? and even if not for publicity, what happened to just good old customer service?
I recently got tickets for a show in the NYC and thought about this when I posted it and cropped out any data that could have been used like this. Parasites come in all sizes and shapes, from street crawlers to Wall St execs...
What would have been more fun and harmless would be to take a "selfie" of your self and your friend at the game with the stadium and field in the back ground.
And the lesson here is: don’t be like this dude and post ticker numbers or barcodes on social media.
Sounds to me like he learned a valuable lesson which didn't cost him too much. People post boarding cards on social media almost every other day, leaving themselves wide open to identity theft as a result. You would think social media companies would do something to prevent against that level of stupidity, but I guess it's not in their interests to do so.
And this is why I block out any sort of identifying numbers on anything I post on IG... it takes all of 5 seconds to make a squiggly line that can save you all sorts of trouble...