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QR-code parking meter scam could steal your credit card — what you need to know

QR-lawmaking parking meter scam could steal your credit card — what you need to know

Twin parking meters on a city street.
(Image credit: Dmitry Morgan/Shutterstock)

Don't trust that QR code on the side of that parking meter. It could be role of a phishing scam.

Law in Austin, Houston and San Antonio written report that in the past month, miscreants have been placing QR code stickers on parking meters to try to become people to zap the QR codes with their smartphone cameras. The resulting URLs will whisk the users to websites gear up to steal their credit-card numbers.

Many cities let you pay for parking meters using smartphone apps, which may be why the scammers think they can fool people into scanning the QR codes, those petty squares of random-looking blocks that can you can scan with a smartphone to receive information.

The trouble is that a QR code can take you anywhere, and y'all can't tell whether it's malicious until you click it.

Encounter more

In fact, Austin and Houston don't even apply QR codes in their parking-meter-payment systems at all. (Other cities exercise, however.) But as security blogger Graham Cluley pointed out in a recent post, first-fourth dimension users and visitors to the cities might nonetheless be fooled.

"The City of Houston DOES Non use QR codes on any on-street parking pay stations, nor does the City have payments through QR codes," said Click2Houston.com, the website of KPRC-Tv set.

The scam seems to accept started in San Antonio in mid-Dec, then quickly spread to the other Texas cities. KPRC-Television set reporters scanned ane of the codes and were taken to a website at "passportlab[dot]xyz," which claimed to be "Quick Pay Parking." (The site has since been taken down.)

If yous detect yourself falling for this scam — which we accept to admit is rather clever — report the fraudulent transaction to your credit-carte du jour issuer immediately. You might be able to have the charges reversed.

Every bit a pre-emptive measure, observe out which smartphone parking-payment app is used by the city you lot primarily park in, and download and sign up for it before you use information technology. That way y'all won't be tempted to scan a QR code, legitimate or not.

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom's Guide focused on security and privacy. He has besides been a dishwasher, fry cook, long-booty driver, code monkey and video editor. He's been rooting around in the information-security space for more than 15 years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom's Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown up in random Television receiver news spots and even moderated a console discussion at the CEDIA dwelling house-technology conference. You can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/texas-parking-meter-qr-scam

Posted by: robertstans1957.blogspot.com

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