Can't grab a ticket at a high price? There is more than one risk behind ticket-snatching software

This year's Spring Festival curtain has officially opened. In 40 days, the national railway is expected to send 280 million passengers. At the same time, the maximum capacity arrangement of passenger transportation on all roads in this year's Spring Festival increased by more than 10% compared with the same period in 2019. The national railway also implemented a new train operation map from 00:00 on January 10, and after this map adjustment, the total number of passenger and freight trains in the country reached 5231 pairs and 10606 pairs respectively. The increasing passenger capacity and the continuous optimization of the train operation structure make people's way back home smoother.

Due to the large passenger flow during the Spring Festival, tickets for some popular routes and popular dates have also appeared "sought-after". Some ticket-snatching software aim at this situation and launch a variety of ticket-snatching "services". Some will be divided into low-speed, fast, high-speed, extremely fast and other levels, corresponding to different estimated success rates of ticket snatching, the fee is increased in turn; some set up different types of ordinary users to grab tickets and members to grab tickets, the purchase of members pay a certain fee, and members are also divided into multiple levels; some claim to be free, but require users to send software links to social platforms to complete "friends to help grab" and "friends to help" and other acceleration tasks... In the face of these various "acceleration packages" and "boost packages", as well as the so-called "priority ticket purchase" and other gimmicks, the majority of passengers should maintain sufficient vigilance and sober understanding.

In fact, no matter which ticketing software, it will eventually need to queue up in the railway 12306 ticketing system. At present, the principle of most ticket snatching software is to use technical means to continuously refresh the remaining tickets and improve the speed of demand submission, thereby increasing the probability of grabbing tickets. Some platforms link the success rate of ticket snatching with user level and acceleration grading, but the rules and priorities are not transparent, and the so-called "estimated success rate of ticket snatching" often lacks sufficient accurate basis. In the case of no way to distinguish between true and false, consumers are often misled by such a "success rate", believing that adding money equals increasing the probability, and then being induced to continue to pay. Once you spend a high price but do not grab a ticket, it will be difficult to defend your rights because the ticket-snatching software has room for interpretation. Not only that, some technical means need to occupy a lot of network resources, which is undoubtedly a huge burden for the 12306 platform. To a certain extent, ticket-snatching software also disrupts the normal ticketing order.

In addition to inducing consumption, there are various charging traps, and some tickets cannot be refunded and changed online, it is also worth being vigilant that there is a risk of personal privacy leakage in ticket-snatching software. Most ticket-snatching software requires passengers to provide personal identity and 12306 ticket purchase account number, password and other information, and some also require users to upload ID photos. Once the information is leaked or stolen by hackers because of the poor management of the software platform, these personal information may be used for some commercial activities without the user's knowledge, and even become a "breakthrough" in online fraud and other activities, and eventually let the user suffer greater economic losses.

In fact, the 12306 ticketing system has long been launched with the "standby ticket purchase" function, and it has been fully promoted to cover all passenger trains. When passengers encounter that the selected train does not have a ticket, they can submit the ticket purchase request through the system, and after successful payment, they can enter the standby queue. Once there is a passenger refund or change, or the railway adds a new ticket according to the transportation capacity, the system will automatically cash in the standby ticket purchase demand for the passenger. In order to adapt to the travel rules of passengers under the conditions of epidemic prevention and control, the railway department will also adjust the latest deadline for standby ticket purchase this year from 6 hours before driving to 2 hours. Therefore, instead of bearing unnecessary economic losses and information leakage risks due to the use of ticket snatching software, it is better to use the "standby ticket purchase" function of the 12306 ticket purchase system.

A small ticket that carries a strong sense of nostalgia. Compared with the past, today's transportation modes are more diverse, the railway network is constantly improving, and people are more convenient and faster to buy tickets. Consumers are expected to polish their eyes and be vigilant about the risks behind ticket-snatching software.

Source People's Daily

Edited by Gao Chenchen

Process Editor Wu Yue