(CelebrityAccess) — Music industry professionals have been approached by suspected scammers with offers of lists of detailed festival attendee data from major European music festivals.
According to a report in IQ Mag, the alleged scammers have offered to sell lists of data on attendees to booking agencies and record labels, from a multitude festival events in Europe, including Norway’s Øya Festival and the UK’s Tramlines.
The email solicitations, which all shared a similar format, were traced to an individual named Vikram H in Bangalore, India, with respondents directed to a company registered in Arizona, IQ Mag said.
The data, which the sellers say includes attendees’ full names, email addresses, job titles, complete mailing addresses, and phone numbers, was purportedly collected via opt-in surveys that conform to Europe’s new GDPR regulations and can be utilized for a variety of marketing purposes.
It is unclear if the alleged scammers actually have the data, or if that’s part of the purported scam. According to IQ, the size of the offered customer lists correspond to the number of people listed as planning to attend an event on Facebook, suggesting that the lists themselves may be falsified based on publicly available data from social media.
“They claim to have gathered the data from surveys, and that all the contacts have agreed to receive emails and calls from third-party companies,” Øya chief executive, Tonje Kaada told IQ. “My guess is that they either don’t have the information they claim to have, or they have nicked the info from our Facebook event somehow.”
