The US online concert ticket shop Ticketmaster agreed to a fine of 10 million US dollars after the company admitted the smaller one Spying on rival CrowdSurge. This is reported by the online magazine The Verge.

According to the court documents, the company hired in the year 2013 Stephen Mead, a former employee of the competitor. Soon afterwards, a senior executive named Zeeshan Zaidi and other members of the management team urged him to use Mead’s known usernames and passwords to break into the CrowdSurge system and obtain information about customers and internal processes and analyzes. The insights also included which artists CrowdSurge used for ticket sales, so that Ticketmaster could target and poach them.

Conditions for Ticketmaster Only 2015 Ticketmaster lost its unauthorized access when CrowdSurge merged with competitor Songkick. Songkick then sued Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation for antitrust violations, but not long afterwards ceased its services. 2018 an out-of-court settlement was agreed in the form of a payment of 110 million US dollars by Live Nation . In addition, Mead and Zaidi have already been 2017 released, as a Ticketmaster spokesman told The Verge.

With the penalty that has now been imposed, the proceedings are not Completely ended, but suspended for the time being. In the meantime, Ticketmaster is subject to some conditions. Among other things, the company must not only submit an annual report to the public prosecutor for the next three years, but also demonstrate that it has developed and implemented internal guidelines against other similar violations.

In the year 2018 Ticketmaster was also the target of a malware attack in which unauthorized persons had access to payment data and other personal information from customers of the online shop. This also included addresses, e-mail addresses, log-in data, names, and telephone numbers. However, only customers from Great Britain are said to have been affected.

(bkr)