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Email scammers attempt to sell festival ticket-holders’ data

Suspected email scammers have been offering to send out festival ticket-buyer data to professionals in the live events industry for hundreds of US dollars.

According to IQ Mag, data of attendees at “many events across Europe,” including Norway’s Øya Festival and the UK’s Tramlines, has been offered for sale by the alleged fraudsters to booking agencies and record labels.

The emails offer music professionals the opportunity to buy ticket-holders’ full names, email addresses, job titles, complete mailing addresses and phone numbers.

The messages state that the data, which it claims is collected from “permission-based, double opt in contacts”, compliant with the new GDPR regulations, be used for “pre-show and post-show marketing campaigns, appointment setting and networking”.

It is reportedly selling a list of 25,127 personal attendee information from Øya for $298. More than 100,000 punters are expected to be at this year’s festival, which is scheduled to take place from August 6 to 10.

However, the festival’s chief executive, Tonje Kaada said the list up for sale was “very much the same number” as those attending on Øya’s Facebook event at the time of the quotation, IQ reports.

Kaada told IQ: “They claim to have gathered the data from surveys, and that all the contacts have agreed to receive emails and calls from third-party companies. My guess is that they either don’t have the information they claim to have, or they have nicked the info from our Facebook event somehow.”

Image: Tramlines Festival