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Beware, concertgoers: Taylor Swift is watching

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Getty Images For dcp via ABC/Emma McIntyre/AMA2018.jpgAttention, Taylor Swift stalkers: You’d better think twice about trying to get near her at one of her concerts. Rolling Stone reports that on Taylor’s recently concluded Reputation stadium tour, she used facial-recognition software to I.D. possible stalkers in the audience. 

According to Rolling Stone, this took place at least once, at her May 18th show at the Rose Bowl.  Fans who stopped to watch rehearsal footage at a kiosk were unknowingly having their pictures taken.  According to concert security expert Mike Downing, those pictures were then transferred to a “command post” in Nashville, where they were cross-referenced with a database of Taylor’s known stalkers, which number in the hundreds.

Dowing tells Rolling Stone, “Everybody who went by would stop and stare at [the kiosk], and the software would start working.”

If you think this is overreaction, think again.  Taylor has so many stalkers that in October, a professor of psychology wrote an article about them for Psychology Today.

But even if there isn’t a stalking problem, Rolling Stone reports the technology, in which Ticketmaster has invested, might be helpful by allowing certain fans to move through turnstiles quickly at events, without them having to stop and go through security.