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Comment by radsquirrel | Hacker News Reader

I worked a summer job in a Ticketmaster box office ten years ago and had access to the whole of their UK customer database in order to print off ticket collections. I’d type in a customer’s post code and up came all of the data Ticketmaster held on them… including their password in plaintext.

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I had to create an account just to reply to this; as much as TM has it's faults this is just false, it does not store passwords in any reversible way or at least hasn't for more than 2 years and all evidence removed.

Source: I am an engineer within TM that has worked on integration between various booking products in the UK market.

Well there is an 8 year delta between your timeline and the OPs... so I don't see any contradictions here.

Glad to hear their security has improved since then! This was the 2014 Commonwealth Games and I had only recently learned about password hashing so I was particularly shocked that they were exposing passwords to thin clients used by front line employees.

As an engineer within Ticketmaster, I'd be curious to hear your take on the conclusion of the article.

> I think we can all agree: Fuck TicketMaster. I hope their sleazy product managers and business majors read this and throw a tantrum. I hope their devs read this and feel embarrassed. It’s rare that I feel genuine malice towards other developers, but to those who designed this system, I say: Shame.

> Shame on you for abusing your talent to exclude the technologically-disadvantaged.

> Shame on you for letting the marketing team dress this dark-pattern as a safety measure.

> Shame on you for supporting a company with such cruel business practices.

> Software developers are the wizards and shamans of the modern age. We ought to use our powers with the austerity and integrity such power implies. You’re using them to exclude people from entertainment events.

> Have fun refactoring your ticket verification system.

As a dev working in big tech, I'm sure they do feel embarrassed, and I'm sure there is jack shit they can do about it. Is that how you feel?

I don't know how many times I've reasonably pointed out why our product is extremely user-unfriendly - backed by evidence from user feedback and endless reddit complaints - but I still get shot down, badly. "Disagree and commit" they say, which is just short for "do what we tell you and shut the fuck up". If you bring up issues too many times, you end being treated like an agitator and they make your life hell. This has remained true for the many different industries I've worked in over the last 17+ years. Software developers are effectively powerless in many organizations.

Everybody has their own personal lines in the sand. People need to work for a living because we're not in a magical, post-need society. Every company has its flaws. Each company has some subjective amount of flaws/sins/evil, and everybody makes their own decision about what they're willing to do for money.

Helping a company use some sleazy dark patterns to make some extra money off of Taylor Swift tickets is honestly pretty mild on the scale of evil software engineering jobs, so I imagine their answer is "I built a system to sell entertainment, now my kids get to go to private school, and I sleep great at night."

Ticketmaster sucks, but it's not like he's working for Palantir, Lockheed Martin, or TikTok.

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