The holidays are approaching, and some passengers are still worried about not getting train tickets. In addition to waiting through the 12306 official platform, there are also many people who choose third-party platforms to grab tickets. They hope that by increasing the price to grab tickets, they can satisfy their desire to go home to visit relatives or travel as soon as possible. Previously, the China Railway Group had issued reminders for many days in a row that the railway department had never authorized any third-party platform to sell train tickets.
Recently, a Beijing News reporter discovered that many netizens reported that the ticket purchase and travel information of unknown passengers appeared on their 12306 platform and could not be deleted, and they suspected that their information had been leaked. The reporter learned from the railway department that this was because some passengers had previously filled in the account number and password of the 12306 platform when grabbing tickets through a third-party platform, causing the third-party platform to obtain this information and use the passenger account to help others grab tickets. Passengers are reminded not to use third-party software to purchase tickets to avoid leakage of personal information.
▲Recently, many netizens reported that the ticket purchase and travel information of unknown passengers appeared in their 12306 accounts. Picture source network
Some third-party platforms will log in to the passenger’s 12306 account to help others grab tickets.
A reporter from the Beijing News noticed that many passengers recently reported that ride information and travel orders from strangers suddenly appeared on their 12306 platform, which was very confusing.
In this regard, the reporter consulted the railway department. According to reports, since passengers need to fill in the 12306 account information and password when purchasing tickets through third-party ticketing platforms, when these platforms help other passengers purchase tickets, they may use technical means to randomly select accounts from users who have purchased tickets on the platform and bind other people's identity information to them to purchase tickets.
Generally speaking, there are two ways to purchase train tickets through third-party platforms. One requires logging into the 12306 account to purchase tickets, filling in the 12306 account and password. If there are no tickets, the train will join the official waiting list and wait, and the remaining tickets will be monitored by the system; the other is to purchase tickets without logging in. The platform states that there will be manual ticket grabbing, but the fee is more expensive. If the ticket grabbing is successful, the service fee ranges from 15 yuan to nearly 100 yuan.
"Third-party platforms will retain user information during the passenger purchase process. Not only will there be issues such as surcharges and bundled sales services, but there may also be risks of personal information leakage." The customer service staff of the 12306 platform said that once a passenger fills in the account password of the 12306 platform when logging in to a third-party account, your 12306 account will no longer be safe, and there may be situations where your account information is misappropriated to buy tickets on behalf of others.
▲A netizen reported that information about multiple unknown passengers appeared in his personal 12306 account and could not be deleted. Picture source network
In order to prevent fraudulent use of accounts to grab tickets, the upper limit of pre-filled "passengers" has been adjusted from 100 to 15 people
Relevant staff from the railway department recommend that passengers and friends change their account passwords as soon as possible and delete information about unknown passengers. However, since the 12306 platform has time requirements for deleting newly added passenger information, sometimes it may not be deleted immediately. Therefore, it is recommended that passengers avoid purchasing tickets through third-party platforms in the future, let alone provide their 12306 account passwords to third-party platforms.
A reporter from the Beijing News noticed that the problem of passenger accounts being used by third-party platforms to purchase tickets for others without authorization is not new to this year. Since the launch of 12306, the game between the official and third-party ticketing platforms has been going on. It often happens that after the passenger information is preempted by others, you are unable to purchase a ticket. For this reason, you must go to the relevant window of the train station to handle the business.
In view of this, in order to prevent "scalpers" from using other people's identity information to maliciously grab tickets, in mid-June 2015, the 12306 website issued an announcement stating that the cumulative upper limit of "passed", "please submit for verification" and "pre-passed" common contacts (passengers) under the registered user name of the website was adjusted from the original 100 to 30 people. Subsequent adjustments were made continuously, and now the upper limit has been adjusted to 15 people.
The railway department has applied for a patent for "preventing automatic ticket grabbing"
It is understood that in the past, when people used third-party platforms to grab tickets, because the system refreshed faster than manually, there were cases where computers grabbed tickets faster than ordinary passengers. However, the railway department continues to adopt technical means to fully safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of passengers and the normal order of ticket sales. Through real-time monitoring and big data analysis of the 12306 system, once users with abnormal ticket purchasing behavior are found, traffic restriction measures will be taken against them. Therefore, no user has priority to purchase tickets. Anyone who purchases an acceleration package at any price on a third-party platform cannot achieve priority purchase of tickets.
In the future, the technical space left for third-party platforms to grab tickets will become smaller and smaller. According to officially disclosed information, 12306 affiliated company China Railway Cheng Technology Co., Ltd., the Electronic Computing Technology Research Institute of China Academy of Railway Sciences Group Co., Ltd., and Beijing Jingwei Information Technology Co., Ltd. applied for a patent for "a method and system, equipment and storage medium to prevent automatic ticket grabbing" in November 2021. The patent was announced in January 2022.
According to the abstract of the patent, the invention uses scalable vector image technology to design a ticket purchase application method based on obfuscated SVG commands and a behavior verification method based on character reasoning to improve the difficulty of automated ticket grabbing.
On September 15 this year, the 12306 system received 53.2 billion daily visits.
Frequent system operations to refresh and grab tickets also increase the burden on the 12306 platform. Data from China Railway Group shows that on September 15 this year, the daily visits to the 12306 system reached 53.2 billion times, which is equivalent to an average of more than 616,000 people grabbing tickets online every second.
The large number of refreshes and clicks are caused by the frequent refreshes of the third-party platform, which affects the operation of the 12306 system to a certain extent. In this regard, China Railway Group also stated that it will expand public cloud applications, expand network bandwidth, strengthen system processing capabilities, and focus on preventing malicious ticket grabbing. At the same time, it will strengthen ticket sales monitoring and routine inspections to meet the demand for extremely large visits and make every effort to cope with ticket sales peaks.
The railway department once again emphasized that Railway 12306 has never authorized any third-party platform to sell train tickets, and it is impossible to give third-party platforms the so-called "priority to purchase tickets." Third-party platforms will retain user information during the passenger ticket purchase process. Not only do they have traps such as surcharges, acceleration packages, and bundled sales services, but they may also pose the risk of personal information leakage.