For those who don’t know, it’s where someone takes a QR code like on a poster for a concert and puts a sticker with a different QR code on top to a fake website that looks like the concert website (or a Rick Roll).
The obvious answer is to scratch off the QR code if you notice it’s a sticker, but It’s not always acceptable -or legal- to start damaging stuff to check if it’s real or not. Also what if it’s out of reach on a sign or something?
You can’t put a little text under saying what the website is as a sort of checksum because the vandal can just write their own website under their sticker.
That wont be a solution in the future.
China used QR code scanning to control movements during covid (although I think its reversed, its the people who show the qr code to the officials who scan it), eventually, these type of digital ID checkpoints are gonna be all around the world just like surveillance cameras. Wanna get access to a building, need an app on your phone. Wanna drive a car? Open the app. Wanna take a bus? Open the app. cops being dipshits and asking for your digital ID to verify your legak status or else they send you to the gulag/concentration camps? Open the fucking app and verify. (Its not USA-specific either, Germany is doing border checkpoints too)
Cars have radios now, you can even survive without internet connection (to fill out the job application) and a phone number (to have banking).
Welcome to the future!
Australia did too. QR codes are probably the least invasive tracking you can imagine. You can open each one in a clean browser, like Firefox focus, if you like. They are just a shortcut for entering urls. If china wants to track its citizens, it’s not with QR codes as they track so much more from the data already on your phone.
Most places with public transport have moved from cash to card based payment. It’s all traceable already. Sure, some places, you don’t need to register the card and can cycle through some, but many places you need to register to use one, or register for reduced fares.
They’re not a url, they’re just a string that’s often a url. There’s no (technical) reason why it couldn’t be a signed public key, or a signed url that the camera app could validate
Yes, they are just data, but commonly that data encodes a url.
I agree, it could be made more secure, but getting rid of url shorteners and trackers that obfuscate real urls would be a step in the right direction with no new software needed.