How to buy tickets from a stranger on Facebook, X or Instagram without getting scammed

The show sold out in minutes. The official resale prices are absurd. Another fan in a group or a thread has two tickets at face value. This is how a lot of fan to fan ticket deals happen, and it is also where a lot of the scams happen. BBB's 2025 data, as charted by Surfshark, puts about half of reported ticket scams on social media, with Facebook alone at 28%.

You do not have to stop buying from other fans. You have to change one thing about how you do it.

Step 1: Find out who you are dealing with, before anything else

Not "do they seem legit". Who they actually are.

Ask the seller for their Anchor. It is a free link (getanchor.id) that shows a real name from a government ID, that a live real-person check passed, and which social accounts are really theirs. Getting one takes about two minutes. The ID stays private; you only see that the check passed.

Open the link yourself. Check that the account you are messaging is on their list. If they refuse, or send a screenshot instead of the live page, or the name does not match, walk away. There are other tickets.

Do this before you look at proof, before you talk price, before anything. Everything else on this list only matters once you know who is on the other side.

Step 2: Get your own Anchor and send it first

This makes asking easy and makes you a better buyer. Sellers get scammed too (fake payment screenshots, "pay here" links that are not the payment app, chargebacks after the tickets are transferred), and a seller who can see your name has a reason to deal with you over the twenty other people in their DMs.

"Here's my Anchor: getanchor.id/a/____. Send me yours and let's do this."

Step 3: Move the tickets the official way

Where the event uses an app (Ticketmaster, AXS, the club's own app), ask for a transfer through it. The venue recognises transferred tickets. Venues with rotating barcodes will reject a PDF or a screenshot at the gate.

Step 4: Pay in a way you can dispute

Scammers push Zelle, Cash App and Venmo Friends and Family because those payments are very hard to reverse. If a seller refuses every method that has buyer protection, that is information.

Step 5: Stop at the first surprise

A "transfer fee" or "verification deposit" that appears after you have paid is not a fee. It is the scam continuing. Do not send a second payment to unlock the first one.

Why this order

Most advice puts payment method first. Payment method decides whether you can get the money back after you have been scammed. Knowing who the seller is changes whether the scam is worth attempting. A verified name changes the scammer's math: they cannot take the money, delete the account and start again as someone else.

What this does not cover

Fake ticket websites that imitate Ticketmaster are a different scam and the biggest single slice in BBB's 2025 data (38%). Nothing on this page helps with those; go to the official site by typing the address yourself. This page is about deals between two people.