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Area Web site thinks people would rather scan a QR code on the site than just click on a link

Grizzled Web veteran Steve Garfield of Jamaica Plain was interested in an NBC Boston promotion to have people buy winter clothes off an Amazon list for people who need them. But when he called up the Web site to find out more, it didn't have a clickable link to the wish list. Instead, it just had one of those QR code thingees, so to get to the list, you'd have to first scan in the code with your phone, which seems kind of silly on a medium designed to link people to things. Garfield provides the link.

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You have literally no way of knowing what the link is until you scan it. Some apps that scan them for you will automatically take you to a link that is encoded by the QR code. That's dangerous as you have no way of vetting what the link is sending you to.

Some restaurants have either willingly or naively used links that take you to their menu...but not before the service they're using has logged a lot of info about your browser/phone/etc. in their data pool.

QR codes can be useful, but they can also lead you to indiscriminate browsing and that's dangerous.

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And what is the entire point of the internet if not indiscriminate spending?

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Some apps that scan them for you will automatically take you to a link that is encoded by the QR code.

That should be configurable in the app (if it isn't, change your app!). I use QR Droid for work purposes, and you can set your preference for what it does with a scanned code (open link, display link, etc.).

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100% agree.

NBC Boston using a QR code instead of a link is a complete data grab. The QR code is great way to put cookies on your mobile device and mine another rich resource of data.

Companies are getting more brazen in their tactics and offering less choice to consumers who don't want to give their data to potentially unscrupulous data brokers.

If people out there want their information tracked and profiled, that's their business. But companies should be more transparent about these practices and give people the option to opt out.

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It shouldn't be possible to do something dangerous by following a link. It makes no difference if the link is something you click or scan.

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There's a whole population of scammers and phishers and malware writers out there who would beg to differ with you.

If anything, you should be more wary of QR codes, because there's no way to mouse over it to look at the actual URL you're about to jump to.

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Part of my job is dealing with all the dangerous things fellow employees might do to my company's infrastructure by just following a link.

Let's play a game of chicken, anon.

I dare you to go to this QR code without looking at the link it encodes:
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/jfB4AIp.png)

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And you think this is any different than when you type in an address in your web browser?

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If you can't tell the difference between using random black boxes to jump to a website of unknown origin and typing "http://givemeavirus.com" in your browser...I can't help you.

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...your computer, you wouldn't get to play with your phone and EVERYONE LOOOOOOVES PLAYING WITH THEIR PHONES TO DO ANYTHING AT ALL EVERY SINGLE THING IN LIFE MUST INVOLVE YOUR PHONE JUST KILL ME NOW!!!!

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But as a healthcare IT professional in treatment for work related stress, who has struggles with smartphone addiction...

If this is a call for help, I hear it.

If you need help or are trying to get others to seek help in IT or other high knowledge, high stress fields, know that I think what you wrote is pretty darn effective.

https://www.psychotherapynotes.com/technology-professionals-struggle-men...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7817526/
The prevalence of anxiety and depression among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: An umbrella review of meta-analyses

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It's not quicker than me going to a website. At least not with my device.

I hate it when a bar or restaurant tells me to "just scan the code" as the default option instead of just handing me a menu, the elimination of which was perhaps the single dumbest COVID measure to have been conceived.

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But having the menu online allows people to enlarge it or use a screen reader. It's great technology.

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Which is why I'm happy to access it through a web browser by typing an address.

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Plus no wasted paper and you can update daily without additional waste

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Unfortunately we're in a stage where they're so "trendy" that a lot of people who aren't doing enough thinking are relentlessly pushing them into the wrong places.

The lack of paper menus annoy me enough that on the rare occasions I get out to restaurants nowadays I pretend I didn't bring my phone with me. This gets various reactions from totally accommodating to silently miffed. The extreme case was a bar where they were so stupidly dedicated to the QR thing that they didn't have paper menus at all, and the bartender handed me his personal phone.

On the other hand, there was a place up in Vermont I fell in love with recently, where they had physical menus right off the bat. When I chatted with the owner, I asked her if they had done the QR thing and she said, "It just doesn't fit with our concept." Which, I would guess, is the kind of attitude that's part of why I liked the place so much -- they recognized me as a tangible human being instead of a cog in a food-providing machine.

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Partly because I don't have a smartphone, and partly because, like... what a weird kind of failure mode to build into your restaurant. What happens when your website goes down? People just can't order?

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They also make the mistake in this case of assuming that:

a) all of their readers own smartphones, and
b) none of their smartphone-owning readers will be reading the article with the QR code on their smartphone.

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(n/t)

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Steve Garfield is great!
Real web aficionado.

Thanks for the url.

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UHub is currently running an ad with a QR code in it. But don't worry: The ad is clickable, so you don't have to scan anything. Unless that's your jam.

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I just realized how utterly, insanely dumb it is to have an un-clickable QR code on your website: if you are viewing the website on your phone, you have no way of scanning the QR code because you can't aim your phone camera at the screen of your own phone!

I mean... just... *HEADDESK*...

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But couldn't you take a screenshot of the QR code, then call it up in your QR reader software, as supremely stupid as that would be, given that the Web site should have just made the thing clickable to begin with?

Or am I asking something that only somebody who hasn't used QR software in the last, oh, five or six years would ask?

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iPhone actually will ask if you want to go to the QR code if you pull up an image that contains one. I went to send a screenshot of a brochure to someone the other day and it asked if I wanted to open the QR code.

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