If you’re reading that headline and thinking this doesn’t affect you – think again. Ticketmaster has been hacked; allegedly. Why allegedly? Because Ticketmaster, the company owned by Live Nation, has yet to confirm what the rest of the world is pretty darn sure about. Time is of the essence here too, yet the live events ticketing giant is staying quiet.
Update 01/06/2024: Ticketmaster has confirmed the company has “identified unauthorised activity within a third-party cloud database environment”.
Knowing that every second counts now for you, a likely owner of at least one Ticketmaster account, what should you be doing to keep secure?
Background to the Ticketmaster Hack
First up. What’s happening? Well, it appears that hackers have gained access to customer data. How likely is it? Australia is already engaging with Ticketmaster to try and find out what’s going on. A hacking group called ShinyHunters has claimed to have taken the customer data of 560 customers. It’s a massive hack leaving most people who’ve ever interacted with Ticketmaster affected.
It would appear that personal details such as name, email and possible shipping addresses have been taken. Partial payment details have also been reported to have been taken, but it does seem as if full payment details is safe for now.
But this doesn’t mean you’re off the hook I’m afraid. When a hack like this goes down, you likely have to update your password. The reason being that if you use one password for lots of different websites and services, those details are now likely on the deep web available to the highest bidder.
Identify How Many Ticketmaster Accounts You Have
This may seem an odd step, but I’m guessing there are a few others like myself out there. I had three Ticketmaster accounts. Two in Ireland with two different emails and one in the UK. This meant I was not involved in one breach, but three.
Reset Your Ticketmaster Accounts
Log out of your Ticketmaster accounts and set about logging back in. But this time, say you forgot your password. Follow the process to set yourself a brand new password. But before you do, consider this.
Get a Password Manager
I don’t know any of my passwords. Honestly. Well, I know one. I know the password for my password manager. If you can remember a password it’s already too easy. If you can remember a password, there’s a real chance that you’re using the same one in multiple places.
Instead, with a password manager, when I sign up for a service, I generate a random strong password using my manager. I have browser extensions, apps and plugins galore than then fill in the details for me when I need them. All the while, I have no idea what my password is.
I highly recommend that you take this opportunity to get a password manager when you’re resetting your Ticketmaster account. I recommend 1Password myself, but Keeper is a good alternative alongside Google and Apple’s own offerings. I would steer clear of LastPass. They’ve had some problems themselves.
And now, I’m about to give you the final step that makes using a password manager the greatest thing in the world.
Reset Every Account Using That Email and Password Combo
If you use the same email address and password combination for lots of different services and also Ticketmaster, you really should reset every account using these details. The reason is that hackers and other cyber criminals can easily get your email and password combination now and just try random websites. It could be relatively harmless like accessing your Netflix account, or a lot worse like getting into your email and gaining access to more accounts.
For this reason, you need to reset all your accounts. And, as I already recommended, resetting them with unique and complex passwords, ideally generated with a password manager.
This is all highly inconvenient, I know. I’ve been caught up in hacks myself. At this stage, you should probably assume you have too. Check websites like Have I Been Pwned to see if your email has already been publically leaked if you really want to know whether or not you’ve been caught up before. But, as I say, chances are you have been.
I spent days recently resetting all my passwords, and I recommend you do to.