
Organised gangs behind rise in QR 'quishing' scams
Thousands of scams linked to fraudulent QR codes have been reported since 2019, the BBC finds.
BBC News
A QR code, quick-response code, is a type of two-dimensional matrix barcode invented in 1994 by Masahiro Hara of Japanese company Denso Wave for labelling automobile parts. It features black squares on a white background with fiducial markers, readable by imaging devices like cameras, and processed using Reed–Solomon error correction until the image can be appropriately interpreted. The required data is then extracted from patterns that are present in both the horizontal and the vertical components of the QR image.
Thousands of scams linked to fraudulent QR codes have been reported since 2019, the BBC finds.