New Jersey is making it harder for scalpers to fool you

Have you ever done a Google (or DuckDuckGo) search for tickets to a concert or sporting event? I would imagine most of us have, but scalpers have devised a way to make you think you are buying tickets from the venue at face value when you are really paying a marked up price to a scalper. They do this by using URLs that look like they are the venue with a variation of the name to fool you; they also pay to have their site show up at the top of search results.

These are called white-label sites and New Jersey is reportedly cracking down on them. The measure, which Governor Murphy has signed, imposes to a $10,000 fine on any re-seller who uses the name of a venue or event without authorization in their URL. New York and Nevada have already passed similar legislation. Google itself has been cracking down on the practice, preventing sites from using the word “official” in ads, barring the practice of using event or venue names in their URLs if they are not affiliated with the event, and requiring re-sellers to post that they are re-sellers.

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