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  Geebo 9:26 am on February 10, 2022 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: football ( 8 ), NFL ( 10 ), scalpers, Scams ( 1,224 ), Super Bowl ( 6 ), tickets ( 17 )   

  The Super Bowl ticket scam returns 

  

  By Greg Collier

  If you have tickets to this weekend’s big game in Los Angeles, congratulations. We are officially jealous. If you’re still trying to get tickets at the 11th hour, we wish you the best of luck. However, in either case, we hope you have legitimate tickets since sporting events are big targets for ticket scammers and the Super Bowl is the biggest of these targets.

  According to Los Angeles area news reports, the average price for Super Bowl tickets are $9000 with the nosebleed seats going for around $5000. If you see tickets being listed online for just hundreds of dollars, the odds are pretty good the tickets are fake.

  Scammers get these tickets by buying legitimate tickets with stolen credit cards. Once the credit card is reported stolen, the tickets are cancelled. If someone were to buy these stolen tickets, they’d be turned away at the stadium entrance for having a counterfeit ticket. Since most people attending the game will be traveling from other parts of the country, this could lead to a massive disappointment for some unfortunate football fans prior to kickoff. Even in-person scalpers on game day could be selling you an armful of fake tickets, and you’ll have absolutely no recourse with them.

  Although you’ll still pay a premium price, your best bet to get legitimate tickets is to buy them through licensed resellers. You should also use a credit card when purchasing tickets, since they’ll provide the most protection if something goes wrong with the purchase. And if you already have tickets, don’t post pictures of them to social media. Scammers can use the digital code on the tickets to virtually steal your tickets.

  This just doesn’t apply only to the Super Bowl. Not only do these scams happen at other large sporting events, but they can happen at smaller events too like your local MLB, NFL, NHL, or NBA games. The same goes for entertainment events like concerts and pro wrestling.

  While an unbelievable deal on tickets might be enticing, they could lead you into an expensive and heartbreaking scam.

   

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  Geebo 8:00 am on April 11, 2019 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Amazon ( 103 ), Australia ( 3 ), Canberra, climate change, craigslist ( 124 ), drones, Nipsey Hussle, scalpers, scalping ( 2 ), Wing   

  Australian drones, craigslist funeral scalpers, and Amazon employees on climate change 

  

  In the Australian capital of Canberra, a fleet of commercial delivery drones has officially been launched for service. The drones are owned by Wing, a subsidiary of Goole’s parent company Alphabet. The drones were tested in the area for a year before officially launching. At first many in the areas surrounding Canberra complained about the noise the drones made, however, the new fleet of drones are said to be quieter. That doesn’t mean that there have been safety restrictions applied to the drones’ usage. The drones can only fly during the day starting at 8am and are forbidden from flying over busy roads and crowds. So far, the drones have been only making small deliveries such as coffee and takeout orders. Are we one step closer to drone delivery becoming an everyday occurrence, or will they be more of a nuisance if deployed on a larger scale? Only time will tell.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prhDrfUgpB0%5D

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  If you follow entertainment news at all, you may have heard about the unfortunate murder of L.A. based rapper Nipsey Hussle. He was gunned down outside of his own clothing shop in L.A. towards the end of March. The rapper was so beloved that there will be a memorial service for him at the Staple’s Center arena. The tickets to his memorial were given out free on a first come first serve basis. That hasn’t stopped scalpers from trying to sell the free tickets on craigslist for upwards of $500 a piece. Craigslist themselves have removed the ads scalping the tickets to the memorial. While we applaud craigslist for the move we have to wonder why craigslist doesn’t use this power more often when it comes to other questionable items for sale on their platform. If you did happen to buy a ticket to the memorial service on craigslist you may be out of luck. The tickets’ distributor says that the tickets are being distributed through a mobile app and are non-transferrable.

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  A group of Amazon employees that number in the thousands have called on the retail giant to do better when it comes to affecting climate change in Amazon’s daily business. While Amazon has promised to “reach 50 percent of all Amazon shipments with net zero carbon by 2030” some Amazon employees say that’s not enough. 4,520 Amazon employees have signed an open letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos asking for better environmental protections during Amazon’s daily proceedings. If you scroll through the names of the signatories of the letter you might notice that the majority of them are technical engineers and managers and not many warehouse workers. Amazon has been widely criticized in recent times for their alleged mistreatment of workers in their distribution centers. One has to wonder where the open letter is for that.

   
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  Geebo 10:00 am on December 20, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bots, Christmas shopping ( 22 ), scalpers   

  The Grinch-bots that are stealing Christmas 

  

  By now you should have all your Christmas shopping done since it’s only five days away. However there are many of us who’ve either been too busy or who have just procrastinated to the point of panic. Well, if you’re planning on getting that hard to get gift that children are clambering for this Christmas you’re probably out of luck.

  Even in the days before the internet,when a must have toy hit the market, like Tickle-Me-Elmo or Cabbage Patch Kids, would hit the store shelves, certain entrepreneurial spirits would buy as many of the items as they could then resell them at an extreme markup. Today is no different as scalpers now use bots, or automated scripts, to try to snatch up as many of the season’s hottest items this year from online marketplaces, leaving you to scrape second-hand sites paying exponential prices as to not disappoint someone this Christmas.

  To make matters worse if you are able to get your hands on one of the must have gifts this year and bought it second-hand, you may be introducing a security flaw into someone’s life. If the item you purchased requires internet connectivity, it may contain malware that can be used for several nefarious purposes.

  If you find yourself in the lurch this holiday season, just go with gift cards. It may seem impersonal, but in the long run your loved ones can buy whatever they want with them and they can save you a lot of headaches in the process.