The agency in charge of Montreal’s parking meters is warning of potentially fraudulent QR codes posted on its signs.
The Agence de mobilité durable de Montréal said in a media release on Tuesday that it was aware that some of its signs had been vandalized with a QR code that wasn’t supposed to be there.
The agency hung the signs on parking metres across the city to encourage people to download their new parking app, Mobicité. The signs have no QR code, but some users have reported seeing one posted on them.
Do not scan the QR code, the agency said, it may direct you to a fraudulent or malicious website.
“Our team is working hard to identify and remove them as quickly as possible,” the media release said. “Thank you for your vigilance and for reporting any suspicious signs to us.”
The agency changed its parking app from P$ Service mobile, which allowed users to pay for parking, to the new app, Mobicité, to allow additional features in the coming years.
For now, the Mobicité app will allow users to only pay for parking, like the old app did. But down the line, Laurent Chevrot, the general manager of the agency, says the app will add other functionalities over the next few years, such as the ability to provide parking information and customer service.
“With the other application, that wasn’t possible,” he said.
Mobicité rolled out at the beginning of June. It cost $719,000 and took 10 months to produce.
The same is true for many other countries.
(Some people might find this post in their All feed)
It’s an easy thing to do from the criminal’s perspective. Set up a phishing website and print some QR stickers to put over the original ones.
I shouldn’t need an app to pay for parking.
You don’t need the app, you can pay at the Paystation. The app just lets you feed the meter without having to go back to it
This. Setup a Paystation where I can tap my card or feed it cash. Sick of needing an app for every stupid little interaction.
Exactly. Choosing not to carry a tracking device everywhere one goes should not result in being treated like a second-class citizen and being unable to access services. The app is fine as an option, but not as a requirement.
Plus, apps are an additional means of tracking beyond that which is possible with websites.
“Share your location to find the parking spot you are in”
Etc.
why were qr codes normalized!?!
Some people don’t know better, others don’t care.
Covid era restaurant menus. They were nice and fringe before that.
QR codes are incredible.
Edited to add, wow I didn’t realize liking qr codes was a hot take. I think they are fascinating tech!
Not really. They’re just barcodes on steroids. Originally created for industrial machinery. They have absolutely no built-in security, and can’t be read by a normal person without a machine helping out (which is a problem if the machine just dumps it straight into a browser’s location bar).
An ideal system would be human- as well as machine-readable, and incorporate some kind of verifiable issuer’s mark. But as usual, no one invented one in time, and so we’re stuck with a system a Japanese factory developed so that their machines could figure out which car part they were looking at.
QR codes are great. This kind of use is not.
