The tech arms race to beat fare-dodgers
This embedded content is not available in your region.
Credit: mirr22_/Tiktok
A technological arms race has broken out to combat the fare-dodging crisis plaguing Britain's railways.
Faced with the prospect of £500m in lost ticket sales, rail operators are embracing artificial intelligence (AI) and so-called machine learning to crack down on freeloaders.
Evasion tactics that once went little further than hiding in a train lavatory to avoid the guard have changed radically since ticket barriers – first trialled on the Tube in 1964 – were introduced at major stations and across commuter networks.
Miscreants are often seen forcing their way through the barriers to avoid paying, a trend recently highlighted by Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, as he issued a call to arms.
However, evasion tactics span well beyond brute force.
The digitisation of ticketing in particular, with the bulk of payments made by bank card, travel card or mobile phone, has opened up whole new avenues for fare abuse and forced operators to respond with tougher safeguards.
This embedded content is not available in your region.
Credit: X/@RobertJenrick
Transport for London (TfL), which puts its annual losses from fare-dodging at £130m, says that 4.7pc of Tube passengers – almost one in every 20 – skipped paying or stumped up the incorrect fare in the last financial year alone.
Yet, across its wider network of the Tube, Overground, buses, Docklands Light Railway and Elizabeth Line, the rate of offending fell from 3.8pc to 3.4pc after fines were raised to £100.
TfL aims to bring it down to 1.5pc by 2030 through an intelligence-led approach combined with new technologies and more proactive enforcement.
While offending in London is well short of New York's 13pc evasion rate, Siwan Hayward, TfL's director of security, says that fare-dodging 'is not a victimless crime'.
She says: 'It robs Londoners of vital investment in a safe and reliable transport network. The overwhelming majority of customers pay the correct fare, and it's unfair to those who do that a minority avoid paying.'
The main weapon in TfL's armoury is its Irregular Travel Analysis Platform (ITAP), which uses ticketing and journey data, passenger information and CCTV to identify repeat offenders.
The tool is integral for a TfL investigations team that seeks to identify 'high-impact offenders', some of whom cost the network up to thousands of pounds a year in lost revenue.
After studying data, the team liaises with 500 uniformed enforcement officers and plain-clothes inspectors, who can demand proof of a ticket or travel card while staging sting operations in stations, sometimes supported by the British Transport Police.
This crackdown led to TfL securing fines of £400,000 last year after prosecuting 360 of the most prolific offenders.
Among the offences deployed by fare evaders are techniques known as zonal avoidance and re-tokenisation. The former, colloquially dubbed 'doughnutting', involves travel through zones that have not been paid for.
In re-tokenisation, or 'card tumbling,' the fraudster deletes a virtual card from a digital wallet on a mobile device after a journey to prevent authorisation of the transaction overnight. The card is then reloaded, at which point it is allocated a new tokenised number, preventing it from being blacklisted.
A similar con involves the use of a bank card with insufficient funds to pay for a ticket. Tube gates identify the card as genuine and will let the holder in and out, only for the payment to bounce when requested.
One offender last year used a contactless card to avoid paying the correct fare on 202 journeys, resulting in £1,427 in fines.
Other scams include the abuse of Freedom Passes, which offer free travel in London for the disabled and those aged 66 and over.
Meanwhile, outside of the biggest cities, at least 2,000 of Britain's 2,500 or so stations still lack barriers.
Therefore, bosses are required to rely on traditional checks to ensure passengers are paying.
Graham Sutherland, chief executive of FirstGroup, which runs express trains on the West Coast and Great Western main lines, said on-train ticket checks remained vital to prevent 'revenue leakage'.
But there is no doubt that technology has been a game-changer.
LNER, which runs trains between London King's Cross and Edinburgh, has led the way among long-distance operators in deploying AI to uncover unusual ticket-purchase patterns and identify fraudsters, setting up a 'machine learning team' to work alongside its risk experts.
A pilot project that began in 2023 immediately identified a customer who had failed to pay for £10,000 worth of travel. Using information uncovered by the new technology, the team then built a case, which resulted in the customer repaying the full loss to LNER.
Paul Larder, at LNER, said the application of machine learning had been revolutionary.
He said: 'Previously, we've relied on our revenue protection team to identify customers who deliberately purchase incorrect tickets for travelling on our services.
'By using AI, we can accurately analyse large amounts of information quickly and identify patterns that our team can investigate further.'
While companies are ramping up efforts to catch offenders, a report from the Office of Rail and Road this month identified 'significant inconsistency' in how operators target fare-dodgers, which has led to unnecessary and unfair prosecutions.
Lord Hendy, the rail minister, who put the cost of fare evasion in England outside London at £400m a year, said a planned new ticketing system as part of the nationalisation programme should reduce instances of people mistakenly buying the wrong tickets.
However, for the thugs who push through – known as bumpers, jumpers and tailgaters – sturdier barriers are being created.
Developed by Cubic Transportation Systems, the barriers stretch from the floor to shoulder height and use AI-aided scanning software to detect instances of fare-dodging.
Cubic says the gates 'can accurately detect, record and flag fare evasion as it's happening, distinguishing between different types of fare evasion, such as pushing through and climbing under the paddles or tailgating'.
Sir Sadiq Khan's TfL has not yet said if it will order the equipment.
However, if they do, they may finally offer some solace to law-abiding passengers confronted by petty criminals cheating the system while regular staff, who are forbidden from staging physical interventions, look on.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘I just want finality': GOP greets newest TikTok extension with resignation
President Donald Trump's latest move to keep TikTok alive is yet again frustrating congressional Republicans, many of whom object to China's continued involvement in the popular app but just want to be done with the whole drama. 'Not my favorite thing,' Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), along-time proponent of the ban, deadpanned, when asked about the president's plan to issue another extension. He spoke a day before the White House confirmed Trump signed a 90-day suspension of enforcement of the law requiring TikTok to divest from ByteDance, its China-based parent company, throwing another lifeline to the short-form video app. By Friday, some House lawmakers registered a note of resigned irritation. The extension — Trump's third since the law went into effect on Jan. 19 — is a unilateral decision not envisioned in the bipartisan law passed by Congress and upheld last year by the Supreme Court. Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.), a member of the House Intelligence and China committees, told POLITICO. 'The national security concerns and vulnerabilities are still there, and they have not gone away. I would argue they've almost become more enhanced in many ways." But Trump's extension of the TikTok law largely boxed out Republicans in both chambers who have shown little inclination — beyond stern words — to prevent him from making these postponements almost routine. Many GOP lawmakers saw themselves as granting the president space to cut a promised deal while the White House deals with urgent priorities, like trade negotiations and the Israel-Iran conflict. 'In light of everything going on, I think he did the right thing,' Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a China hawk who voted for the ban, told POLITICO of Trump. 'I have concerns about all kinds of things — that [the extension] is on the list — but it's not at the top of the list.' Though Trump has promised his TikTok negotiations areclosely tied to trade talks with China, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent testified last week to a Senate panel that TikTok's sale wasnot currently a part of the negotiations with China, raising a further potential obstacle to Trump inking a deal in the near future. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a close ally of the president and longtime national-security hawk said earlier in the week: 'The sooner we get that issue solved, the better,' without offering any ideas for further enforcement. 'I just want finality,' Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told POLITICO. 'I want some certainty and just know that the Congress isn't being played when we make a decision [that the app] be sold.' Another member of the House China Committee, Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), told POLITICO, 'No more extensions. It's time to follow through.' Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), also a member of the China panel, noted in a post on X Thursday the law only allows one extension of the compliance deadline, adding, 'I was proud to support the ban of TikTok and believe the law should be implemented as written.' With their comments, the lawmakers echoed House China Chair John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), who in early June called for the U.S. to 'let [TikTok] go dark' to bring China to the table to negotiate. He reiterated that stance on Friday. 'Delays only embolden the Chinese Communist Party,' Moolenaar said in a statement to POLITICO. 'I urge the administration to enforce the law as written and protect the American people from this growing national security threat." Still, observers say Republicans are not exercising their leverage to demand the White House enforce the law they helped write, for example by withholding funding or congressional oversight hearings. "I keep reading that Republicans are 'frustrated' and 'impatient' about their TikTok law being ignored, but they should stop complaining to reporters and take it up with Trump,' said Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of the pro-tech Chamber of Progress. Among the Republicans being undercut by the president is his own secretary of state. Marco Rubio — who as senator was one of the loudest critics of TikTok's ties to China, and a huge backer of the app's ban — has been conspicuously silent as Trump has repeatedly granted more time to strike a deal for its sale. 'You have to decide what's more important, our national security and the threat that it poses to our national security,' Rubio told POLITICO in March 2023, as Congress was considering a ban. 'You have to weigh that against what you might think the electoral consequences of it are. For me, it's an easy balancing act. I mean, there is no balance. I'm always going to be for our national security.' A spokesperson for Rubio at the State Department did not respond to a request for comment. Democrats — even those who support keeping TikTok online — say Trump's approach is the wrong one. 'These endless extensions are not only illegal, but they also put TikTok's fate in the hands of risk-averse corporate shareholders,' Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told POLITICO in a statement. 'This is deeply unfair to TikTok's creators and users. I'm prepared to work towards a solution, but Trump isn't coming to the table.'
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Tech-fueled misinformation distorts Iran-Israel fighting
AI deepfakes, video game footage passed off as real combat, and chatbot-generated falsehoods -- such tech-enabled misinformation is distorting the Israel-Iran conflict, fueling a war of narratives across social media. The information warfare unfolding alongside ground combat -- sparked by Israel's strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and military leadership -- underscores a digital crisis in the age of rapidly advancing AI tools that have blurred the lines between truth and fabrication. The surge in wartime misinformation has exposed an urgent need for stronger detection tools, experts say, as major tech platforms have largely weakened safeguards by scaling back content moderation and reducing reliance on human fact-checkers. After Iran struck Israel with barrages of missiles last week, AI-generated videos falsely claimed to show damage inflicted on Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion Airport. The videos were widely shared across Facebook, Instagram and X. Using a reverse image search, AFP's fact-checkers found that the clips were originally posted by a TikTok account that produces AI-generated content. There has been a "surge in generative AI misinformation, specifically related to the Iran-Israel conflict," Ken Jon Miyachi, founder of the Austin-based firm BitMindAI, told AFP. "These tools are being leveraged to manipulate public perception, often amplifying divisive or misleading narratives with unprecedented scale and sophistication." - 'Photo-realism' - GetReal Security, a US company focused on detecting manipulated media including AI deepfakes, also identified a wave of fabricated videos related to the Israel-Iran conflict. The company linked the visually compelling videos -- depicting apocalyptic scenes of war-damaged Israeli aircraft and buildings as well as Iranian missiles mounted on a trailer -- to Google's Veo 3 AI generator, known for hyper-realistic visuals. The Veo watermark is visible at the bottom of an online video posted by the news outlet Tehran Times, which claims to show "the moment an Iranian missile" struck Tel Aviv. "It is no surprise that as generative-AI tools continue to improve in photo-realism, they are being misused to spread misinformation and sow confusion," said Hany Farid, the co-founder of GetReal Security and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Farid offered one tip to spot such deepfakes: the Veo 3 videos were normally eight seconds in length or a combination of clips of a similar duration. "This eight-second limit obviously doesn't prove a video is fake, but should be a good reason to give you pause and fact-check before you re-share," he said. The falsehoods are not confined to social media. Disinformation watchdog NewsGuard has identified 51 websites that have advanced more than a dozen false claims -- ranging from AI-generated photos purporting to show mass destruction in Tel Aviv to fabricated reports of Iran capturing Israeli pilots. Sources spreading these false narratives include Iranian military-linked Telegram channels and state media sources affiliated with the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, NewsGuard said. - 'Control the narrative' - "We're seeing a flood of false claims and ordinary Iranians appear to be the core targeted audience," McKenzie Sadeghi, a researcher with NewsGuard, told AFP. Sadeghi described Iranian citizens as "trapped in a sealed information environment," where state media outlets dominate in a chaotic attempt to "control the narrative." Iran itself claimed to be a victim of tech manipulation, with local media reporting that Israel briefly hacked a state television broadcast, airing footage of women's protests and urging people to take to the streets. Adding to the information chaos were online clips lifted from war-themed video games. AFP's fact-checkers identified one such clip posted on X, which falsely claimed to show an Israeli jet being shot down by Iran. The footage bore striking similarities to the military simulation game Arma 3. Israel's military has rejected Iranian media reports claiming its fighter jets were downed over Iran as "fake news." Chatbots such as xAI's Grok, which online users are increasingly turning to for instant fact-checking, falsely identified some of the manipulated visuals as real, researchers said. "This highlights a broader crisis in today's online information landscape: the erosion of trust in digital content," BitMindAI's Miyachi said. "There is an urgent need for better detection tools, media literacy, and platform accountability to safeguard the integrity of public discourse." burs-ac/jgc
News24
an hour ago
- News24
Catnip for content creators? Diddy trial becomes digital stage for hungry influencers
Sean 'Diddy' Combs' high-profile trial has become a hotspot for influencers and YouTubers, who provide recaps and personal narratives on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Since cameras are not permitted inside the courtroom, they step outside to stage and share their 'hot takes.' Content creators, some with no formal journalism training, capitalise on the trial's drama and celebrity involvement to grow audiences and earn revenue. The criminal trial of Sean 'Diddy' Combs is now in its sixth week of testimony - and interest among influencers and YouTubers is still soaring as online personalities flock to the Manhattan federal courthouse to livestream their musings. Every day, it's the same routine: content creators on platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube rub shoulders with legacy media organisations as they set up cell phone tripods and stage their shows, enthusiastically relaying their hot takes. The trial of Combs, once a titan of the music industry who faces life in prison if convicted on sex trafficking and racketeering charges, can't be broadcast. The federal courthouse doesn't allow cameras, laptops, phones or even wireless headphones inside. So, alongside the many journalists covering the trial, influencers hustle in and out of the courthouse throughout the day to recount the proceedings beat by beat, dropping off and picking up their electronics at security each time. AFP One woman who goes by the TikTok name 'KealoHalika' said that in the first two days of testimony, she earned an estimated 10 500 followers; her account now has 40 500 followers. 'It was like craziness,' she told AFP outside the courthouse. 'It's been a lot of moving pieces. It's definitely changed my life.' Combs is incarcerated and doesn't enter or exit the courthouse publicly. But some of the high-profile attendees and witnesses do, including members of the music mogul's family and figures like Kid Cudi, the rapper who testified that Combs's entourage torched his car. These paparazzi-esque arrivals and exits are catnip for content creators to, in turn, feed their followers. The brief cameo of Ye, who stopped by to lend his 'support' to Combs amid the proceedings, was a particular field day for the chronically online. Donat Ricketts, a 32-year-old artist from Los Angeles, was a regular at the high-profile Tory Lanez and A$AP Rocky trials in California. He told AFP he makes between $8000 and $10 000 a month, including through YouTube's ad revenue program and fan donations. 'This is my first time travelling to another state to cover a case,' said the creator with about 50 000 YouTube subscribers. 'It feels like a vacation, plus I'm able to work and make money from YouTube.' Ricketts didn't study journalism - but he thinks his 'big personality' and ability to relate to online viewers set him apart. 'This case is the turning point where mainstream media knows that the 'independent journalists' are a force to be reckoned with,' he said. 'Personal narrative' According to a 2024 Pew Research Center study, one in five Americans get news from influencers online; for people under 30, the share jumps to 37%. Reece Peck, a professor of political communication and journalism at the City University of New York, called the competition among content creators 'Darwinian.' 'They're so scared of losing their clientele or their audience. And so with that logic, that you have to constantly create content, the news cycle is such an attractive source of material,' Peck told AFP. And the Combs trial is a fount, he said: 'It's sex, it's violence, and it's celebrity.' Emilie Hagen said she does have a journalism degree but these days publishes via her Substack, also putting out content on Instagram and TikTok. 'I'm there every day providing humorous updates,' she told AFP of the Combs trial. Dozens of traditional media outlets are providing coverage and analysis of the trial. But Hagen said she's 'able to go down rabbit holes that they're not allowed to go down.' AFP 'I don't have to stick to the daily recap,' she said. 'I can insert a personal narrative.' Many of her most fruitful videos are of 'me interacting with all of the wild people that come to the trial outside the courthouse,' she added. Hagen said she's notched 12 000 more Instagram followers and 10 000 more on TikTok since proceedings began. She said some fans have donated, which recently allowed her to hire a linesitter. Getting into the main courtroom, as opposed to overflow rooms with video feeds of the trial, can require either arriving overnight or the day prior, and many influencers, along with media outlets like ABC News and The New York Times, hire people to hold spots. But even with the deluge of news updates from media outlets and content streams from influencers, some people still want to see the trial for themselves. Val Solit, a teacher from Los Angeles on vacation to New York, dropped by the proceedings after having lunch in nearby Chinatown with her partner. 'I like crime and dramas,' she told AFP, likening the hype to the 1990s-era trial of O.J Simpson. 'It was kind of fascinating to come and see it.' 'It's history in the making.'
