Online ticket thefts target Taylor Swift fans. How to protect yourself.

Tickets for the Taylor Swift Eras Tour concerts are not easy or cheap to get. Fans of the superstar who manage to get tickets never think about losing them. But that’s exactly what’s happening to Swifties across the country, as hackers target Ticketmaster accounts and steal customer tickets to resell on other sites.

“It was like a punch in the gut,” Morgen Bernius, a mother from Maryland, told CBS News national consumer correspondent Usher Qurashi as she described the moment she discovered the Taylor Swift tickets, the that she had purchased for her daughter suddenly disappeared from her Ticketmaster account.

“The tickets are gone — gone,” Bernius said, adding that she could cry just thinking about it. “It was devastating,” she added.

Ticketmaster won’t say how many people had their tickets stolen, Qurashi reported, but reports of ticket thefts similar to Bernius’s have been circulating on social media over the last month. “I woke up and my tickets were transferred ‘successfully,'” another theft victim said in quotes.

“The most important tip I can give fans to protect themselves is to make sure they have a strong, unique password that they don’t use on other platforms,” said Kaitlyn Henrich, global head of Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, Qurashi said.

When asked if the company had let its customers down, Henrich added: “We are constantly looking to look at current developments and improve the customer experience.”

For now, this experience includes an average wait of 48 hours for fans to get their tickets back after notifying the company of their disappearance. As an additional precaution, Ticketmaster is limiting ticket transfers to 72 hours prior to Eras Tour concerts and requiring two-factor authentication for some transactions.

“It’s a very small percentage, less than a tenth of a percent,” Henrich said, “but obviously for the one fan that’s going through this, it’s a really stressful situation.”

Online ticket thefts also harm those who unknowingly purchase stolen tickets.

Karen Perry, who paid more than $4,000 for two seats on StubHub to see the Eras Tour in New Orleans, received an email from TicketMaster just weeks before the show informing her that her tickets were stolen and would be returned to the original purchaser.

“The tickets transferred to you were purchased by someone who attempted to steal tickets. As a result, they were canceled and returned to the original ticket holder,” the letter said.

“My heart sank, my stomach sank,” Perry told Qurashi. “For example, I was at work and immediately started crying.”

StubHub says Ticketmaster never informed them about the customer thefts, which the company only learned about through media reports.

“I think if there was a world where Ticketmaster, for example, was more collaborative or more transparent about the problems they’re having and the way they’re trying to solve those problems, we could be a partner. “in this effort,” StubHub’s Laura Dooley told Qurashi.

What you can do to protect yourself

Experts say there are several steps ticket buyers can take to reduce the risk of being ripped off.

• Check early and regularly whether your tickets are still in your account and have not been transferred.
• Buy from sellers who offer replacement or refund guarantees.
• Take screenshots of all your purchases.

Perry, who had unknowingly purchased stolen tickets from StubHub, was able to find new seats with the company’s help and see Swift in action in mid-October.

“We just had the best night of our lives,” Perry said. “Undoubtedly. It was better than our wedding. It was so good.”