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Spirit Airlines Reportedly Bans TikToker After Baggage ‘Hack’ Went Viral

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One TikTok user has been banned from flying with Spirit Airlines for two years after posting a baggage ‘hack’ that ended up being viewed by millions of users. (www.gatechecked.com) More...

Roger Anderson
News junkiePromoter

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frequentflyguy
frequentflyguy 4
Theft is theft even when its "hacking"
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stardog01
stardog01 2
While this one incident may have been fairly harmless, I can see the concern if people start altering boarding passes. These passes are used to get through Federal security points. If bad guys start trying to alter passes in other ways, such to get the wrong people on board, there could be real harm. I can see Spirit's seriousness with handling this person the way they did.
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billatq
billatq 3
The actual barcodes on boarding passes are cryptographically signed and the TSA is already piloting taking an ID and matching it to the names reported by airlines instead of inspecting the boarding passes anyway. There are plenty of actual problems, but this isn't one of them.

This type of boarding pass modification just means that airline staff without a barcode scanner handy are likely to just trust what is printed on the paper. It's fraud.
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jimquinndallas
Jim Quinn -1
Too bad he wasn't tagged for some sort of federal offense.
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v035799163
שמואל ויטמן 0
אין כמו התמונות שלך את מיוחד ומעניין
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r6russian
roman fedotov 0
what retards thought a pdf boarding pass was a good idea. might as well send people a blank txt file and have them write up their own ticket to whatever they want
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JoelRugeno
Joel Rugeno -7
Bad public relations on the part of Spirit, another missed opportunity to create some good will with their small part of the flying passengers
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ghstark
Greg S 5
Nonsense, hacking tickets is a theft and a safety issue, and furthermore the availability of easily distributed electronic forms of boarding passes is a huge convenience for passengers. If people abuse the system it will go away, and you'll once again be forced to check in at the airport and only there will you get your boarding pass.
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JoelRugeno
Joel Rugeno -3
Nonsense, the bar code is the only portion of the boarding pass that counts, the alteration made by the individual was confined to a single alphanumeric character that in boarding was meaningless. What bothered Spirit’s was the media propaganda that the user tried to rile up, it was sophomoric, as was Spirit’s reaction
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KicksOnRoute66
Roger Anderson 1
Another likely issue - Added boarding time. Imagine a bunch of people arguing with the gate agent that their ticket says 1.
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blackstock
Michael Blackstock 0
I will not go as far to say this was bad public relations but it was a missed opportunity for Spirit. Nothing was ever hacked, just a thought experiment not carried through. If Spirit had not already thought about this eventuality, then the video poster educated them.

Given the million of views, they could have contacted the poster for some possible resolutions. For example, Spirit could asked for the poster's cooperation vs a ban. Recreated the video with with some funny scenario where he needed a bigger bag at the last min to move a silly item like a giant 3d print of the world ugliest dog, anything funny. In a panic he changes his pass, obviously caught by gate agent in embarrassing but funny way, so they could work in a PSA of don't really do this. Posted the new video for free viral marketing.

Some people on this site seem to live in a different world when it comes to never making a mistake.
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