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Slashdot: SFMTA Scambles To Shut Down Viral Parking Ticket Tracker

SFMTA Scambles To Shut Down Viral Parking Ticket Tracker
Published on September 27, 2025 at 01:30AM
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGATE: It had all the makings of a viral X post, and viral it did go, with over 8 million views in under 24 hours. The message was straightforward: "I reverse engineered the San Francisco parking ticket system. I can see every ticket seconds after it's written." Underneath it was a familiar image for any iPhone user -- an Apple map of the city dotted with gray, initialed bubbles, and an explanation: "So I made a website. Find My Friends?" No. "AVOID THE PARKING COPS." The anarchy, however, was short-lived. [...] Given the potential lost revenue at stake, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency caught on like the rest of the internet, and by Tuesday afternoon, the site had been quickly rendered obsolete. Undeterred, [creator of the site, Riley Walz] restored the site again after 10 p.m., though this, too, didn't last. By his estimation, it was only active for a few more hours. "We made sure that all access to citation data was via authorized routes," said Erica Kato, a spokesperson for SFMTA, in an email to SFGATE. "But when our staff's safety, and personal information of people who have received parking citations, is at risk, we must act on that swiftly." Yet the saga wasn't over. By Wednesday, the official SFMTA ticket payment site was also down, citing "maintenance." "I'm curious what was going on there," said Walz over the phone. "If it is even because of me." As of Wednesday afternoon, that site is functional and the chaos seems over for now. According to SFMTA, there is no need for a site like Walz's."The official way to access our parking citation data is via our public website on DataSF," Kato said. "Anyone is still able to see [the] type of citation, date of issuance and data that can be mapped and analyzed on DataSF daily."

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