Stay Safe Out There (1 Viewer)

[Cotswold]

Take care before scanning QR codes.

Apparently on some car parking sites the QR codes for the car park company are being covered over with another that will take your details and extract hundreds, or an amount that they expect to be paid. So they think that they've paid £5 to park but when (eventually) they check their account £800 has disappeared. The scam could be applied just about anywhere that uses the mysterious and impossible to validate QR codes.

Which as far as I am concerned is just another reason never to use them. (Which I never have)

 

[Pat Hartman]

Personally, I don't use my phone to pay for ANYTHING. I love the idea of the convenience but the downside, is too scary to contemplate if you know anything at all about software. At least with plastic, your liability is limited to $50 per card and the onus on finding the scams falls on the CC company where it should since they are the ones with the resources. Sadly, municipalities and stores simply don't prosecute CC fraud. My daughter got an alert from CapitalOne last month about some suspicious charges. Apparently her card had been duplicated somehow and had been used for 4 charges ~ 80 each,bang,bang,bang at the same retail store and that set off a fraud alert. So,she said it was fraud. That means that CapitalOne won't pay the money to the retailer but the customer is gone with the goods. So she called Walmart and spoke to the manager and explained that the crime just happened and she had the exact time of the charges so they could review the video and identify the perps but the manager said they don't pursue these declined charges. So she called the police in Shelton and they said that since she wasn't technically the victim of the crime, she couldn't press charges. So there you go. $320 gone forever and the criminals win again. At least it wasn't Christine's money. But this is why prices are higher than they need to be.

And now we have the "shopping" mobs who just walk in, fill their bags and leave.

 

[Isaac]

Take care before scanning QR codes.

Apparently on some car parking sites the QR codes for the car park company are being covered over with another that will take your details and extract hundreds, or an amount that they expect to be paid. So they think that they've paid £5 to park but when (eventually) they check their account £800 has disappeared. The scam could be applied just about anywhere that uses the mysterious and impossible to validate QR codes.

Which as far as I am concerned is just another reason never to use them. (Which I never have)

Wow ... that's a slick crime, and a shame for sure. Hope you have not lost using them.
Here they sometimes put 'readers' into gasoline stations so your card is read by another thing too

 

[Cronk]

QR codes in parking lots - high tech way of perpetuating an old scam

"People have run parking scams in which they've directed motorists to leave their cars on lots they neither owned nor had the authority to grant temporary permission for their use, but none got away for it very long, let alone "for 25 years" as the e-mailed tale would have it. In December 2009, a Brooklyn man broke into a closed city-owned garage, opened it, and began charging people for parking. He was chased off the site the next day by police, who subsequently tracked him via the DNA he left on a soda can and arrested him on charges of burglary and criminal impersonation.

Similarly, in May 2008 a maintenance worker with the Birmingham [Alabama] Parking Authority collected fees from motorists attending a nearby charity event then directed them to leave their cars on a private lot. Many of those vehicles were subsequently towed and their drivers charged $200 to retrieve their cars."

See https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fake-parking-attendant/

 

[Cotswold]

Personally, I don't use my phone to pay for ANYTHING. I love the idea of the convenience but the downside, is too scary to contemplate if you know anything at all about software.

I have had contactless removed from my cards. I only have a smart-phone because it is convenient today. In the same way it is convenient to have a car, or an umbrella if it rains. It is handy for Signal and texts but I never look at emails on it. I'll never be addicted to the damn thing like so many are.

Nothing worse than being in a supermarket waiting in the queue tilling-out with the berk at the front trying to pay with their phone and taking minutes to do it. At times you just lose the will to live watching them. What is quicker and safer than typing in four numbers?

 

[moke123]

One of my favorite scams was an organization that was stealing really high end cars and stripping them down to the bare frame. They would dump the frame on the side of a road. Couple weeks later they would buy the frame back when it went to auction and receive a salvage title. With title in hand they then reassemble it and legally sell it.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Anyone who tried the QR code scam on me would have trouble since I don't have any bank or credit card apps or info on my phone.