Police in several US cities are warning residents not to pay for their parking using QR codes stuck to parking meters. That's because these codes have been planted there by scammers, who are using them to direct people to fraudulent websites that capture their payment information.
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Law enforcement in Austin and San Antonio have issued warnings over the holiday season. Police say they have discovered a series of stickers with illegal codes appearing on parking meters, while a report by local news site Click2Houston shows how one of the fraudulent codes directed people to a website promising “fast parking.” (The website now appears to be offline.)
Police advise anyone who mistakenly enters their credit card information on one of these websites to file a police report and contact their card vendor to reverse any payments.
Once derided as an outdated technology, QR codes have been increasingly used in the West in recent years. These two-dimensional barcodes can store snippets of data, but they are most commonly used to direct people to URLs. They have been a staple of digital payments in Asia for many years, but they have also been adopted in the West during the pandemic and are now used to connect people to restaurant menus, report vaccination status and check in to locations.
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The convenience of QR codes (QR stands for “quick response”) is balanced by their lack of security. Although the code itself cannot be included, it can be used to direct people to fraudulent or dangerous sites. There is no way for a human to “read” a QR code, and the preview URLs generated by mobile devices are ambiguous at best.
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The advice for avoiding these scams is the same as for any phishing scam: check the URL of the website you're redirected to for any spelling mistakes or less than professional design. And in the case of parking fees, look for official apps commonly used in US cities to make such payments.
Source of information: theverge.com
