status match fraud
 

what's peoples opinion on statusmatch.com? innovative to stop fraud or not?

Yes, I just checked and their advertising still hasn't changed and it is blatant false advertising.

See some discussion about this on the recent Air Canada match here: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-...ir-canada.html.

I would have thought they would at least catch all Photoshopping, but if they are even missing some of those that's quite sad and even worse than I thought.

Regardless, the core issue isn't that status match fraud is happening (after all, it happened before statusmatch.com entered the market). The real issue is the false advertising, in which they explicitly advise airlines to avoid status challenges and use matches instead since they have eliminated the fraud. As you say their "100% no-fraud guarantee" is trivially easy for us to disprove, even though I'm sure they actually do reduce fraud to some degree. No one, including them, knows for sure what % they actually decrease it.

Before I saw those Ebay listings, I was thinking that basically that service is querying Amadeus/Sabre and those alliance system to check if the FFP/SSR record matches or not, given specific elite status information uploaded by users. It's generally reliable and this sounds like a good service that can eliminate fraud, while according to some feedback online during the Air Canada status match promotion, it looks like sometimes they had to turn to manual review (probably because their workload was too heavy?) for a part of applications, leading to wrong approvals and definitely not "100% no-fraud". But still, I do support the establishment of such service because we are troubled by photoshopers for too long time.

However, extracting information from those system and selling those private information as a service to airlines is 100% illegal. For example Star Alliance airlines is actually reading, indirectly, information and core data of Skyteam airlines by using that statusmatch.com service. This is not only a severe data security issue but also act of commercial espionage. I'm quite sure their agreement with Amadeus/Sabre and other system forbids such use. During classical status match promotion, customer support agents of airlines will reject to login to customer's account even if customer intentionally tell them to do so because it would lead to lawsuit. Relying on services like statusmatch.com may help at the very start but pose bigger risks to airlines because the essence of the behavior does not change. I think in the long-term future, that company together with one or two specific airlines who use their service will be sued and fined a lot of money once that service becomes popular.

After I saw those Ebay listings mentioned in this thread especially "Lufthansa Senator" and "Air Canada Elite Status" relevant to the status match promotion serviced by that company, and a suspicious tweet posted by the founder of this service:
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...c7aaea57ed.jpg


I start to doubt the integrity of this company. If they are really validating submissions by querying the alliance system as much as possible, there will be no fraud at all because the system will tell whether that "gold member" is true or not. Then why were there still so many Ebay listings when they are using"100% no-fraud" propaganda? Was someone employed by that company selling elite status by lying to the airlines from their end? Was there someone employed by that company intentionally approve ineligible submission in collusion with photoshopers to make money?

And if a customer does not have elite status that qualifies for a status match then what's the purpose of "register for the airline to expand its offer to include him/her"? For what reasons would airlines enroll someone in the status match promotion who is not qualified at all? Not qualified definitely means not qualified. It does not make sense to register if not qualified as said, unless that company will secretly "rebrand" that customer (considering the fact that statusmatch.com actually charges 50~75usd per each application) and make airlines think that customer is qualified while actually not. Even if they are not doing such forgery for commercial purpose, this kind of data collection still makes me uncomfortable. Maybe the founder of this service should show up here and clarify all the legal risks and strange phenomenon noticed by frequent flyers on the forum. I personally do not want company that is providing seemingly illegal service to gather (via multiple status match promotions) and keep my personal information for commercial use, even if they can help reduce scam (this adds to the airlines, not me).

Airlines can't verify the status the applicant has via any system, they have to trust the submission the applicant made. LH &co were burned big time during the London/UK *A statusmatch in the 2000s, so they changed a few things and matched elites can't use some of the benefits easily. The AF/KL match a few years ago produced quite a few photoshop elites, but this has become the new normal for statusmatch campaigns. Using an agency like statusmatch.com is just a fig leaf to comply with any legal challenges the cuckolded loyalty program may have.

A smart airline, with ticket desks (oops LH...) could run a campaign that requires prospective applicants to bring the cards they wish to match to an ATO. Staff verify ID, Membership. It would cut out a lot of fraud because it's a whole other game to print fake cards or spoof Passbook cards.

But ticket desks cost money...staff are €€€ and that's why they all need to be closed and limited to XBAG's.

Well, just found this latest data point https://statusmatcher.com/report/82604 https://archive.ph/2NGxN

While there are no public Status Match campaigns and that airline does not sell status, statusmatch.com offered Royal Air Maroc Safar Flyer Gold status (oneworld sapphire equivalent) for 99usd. As mentioned on the Internet, ITA Airways almost accept every submission without due verification and I'm convinced that there exist large quantities of photoshoped applications...Moreover, no other skyteam airlines can currently verify the status of an ITA Airways elite member from a techical perspective because their membership information have not even been accessible to Skyteam alliance system. We've seen multiple reports that flyers have tryied to add AZ FFP info to the tickets but the counter and system of for example Air France and KLM cannot locate the data and status from ITA Airways. So basically that website is selling status as products which is not essentially different from Ebay photoshopers but under the cover of "Status Match as a service" because when nobody except ITA Airways itself can really verify the status of "ITA Airways Elite member" and no major airlines would take it seriously, they statusmatch.com somehow guarantee it and "introduce the ITA Airways Elite member to Royal Air Maroc" and charge the customer for 99usd by doing the upgrade. Aren't they to some extent deceiving the airlines?

According to Lucky:
https://onemileatatime.com/deals/roy...comment-265636

RAM does a statusmatch for €49 only

According to https://www.safarflyerstatusmatch.com/faq/ https://archive.ph/iTgpl which seemed to be launched just this week

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ce802fb1e3.jpg

Royal Air Maroc is charging 45 EUR (~50USD) for the match, service provided by statusmatch.com, but do not accept ITA Airways at all.

So here is the question, isn't it suspicious that statusmatch.com was able to do the match, for its own clients who hold ITA Airways status (which could be scam-matched very easily), at double the price and on the premise that this is technically not allowed by the airline?

There are also reports that they are not accepting people for a RAM match that previously got AC elite status thru statusmatch.com :)

It's simple to check airline status of some airlines by knowing frequent flyer number and name, however it's a bit manual work - you just create a "dummy booking" with the personal data of the person who claims to have status - enter frequent flyer number of the claimed elite status - and check whether it will be displayed or perks like free advance seat reservation are applied to the dummy reservation.
E.g. validating Flying Blue status - you make a fake booking and go to seat reservation. When selecting seat options the system tells you the status of the passenger.