![]() Let's talk about how that kind of trust can be exploited by bad actors. Of course, there was an incentive to do it. The biggest example we've seen recently was during the Super Bowl when Coinbase, their ad was just a bouncing QR code, and 20 million people put their phone up to their television sets or laptops and scan this thing, causing their site to crash just for a few seconds, but still, it was kind of a national fervor to scan this thing and it was going to give you some free money. Because they look more sophisticated, I think the mind believes that it's more sophisticated. ![]() There's a lot of information you can see in there, sometimes there's pictures in there, like a Snap ghost. Heidi Mitchell: I think that's a good point, that it does feel a little bit high tech, more than just a regular barcode that could be really easily faked. Zoe Thomas: Is there anything in the fact that it's tech, are we more trusting because it feels like somebody built this and therefore there must be something maybe good behind it? We've just become really used to them in this touchless, semi post-pandemic world. I mean, it isn't totally a trick because it's often useful, but we just naturally lift our phones up, scan this thing and it's going to take us to a website to log in, to pay for something, to get onto the wifi in some public space. That's what we've been tricked into believing. We see them, it's like when you see a line, you just join the line assuming that that's heading you in the right direction. When this QR code's right in front of you, it feels so easy to just put your phone up in front of it, it just scans it, it takes you to a website. Heidi Mitchell: Psychologists say that there's a bunch of different biases at play, but there's this thing called urgency bias where you just want to take care of the thing that's right in front of you and get it done. What is it about these QR codes that makes us humans so inclined to do that? Every time I see them, I'm so inclined to pull out my phone and scan it. Zoe Thomas: Okay, but now I feel like it has picked up speed. It was used a little bit, but it never really picked up speed in anything other than manufacturing. They were devised by Toyota actually, in the '90s, so that they would put them on the parts so that during manufacturing they could just scan this QR code and it would have all the information they needed, where it goes, when it gets loaded into the product. Heidi Mitchell: They're basically like the regular scanning code that you would see on any product at your checkout at the grocery store, but they have much more information them. Zoe Thomas: Heidi, most of us know what QR codes look like and what they're used for, but give us a bit of background. I'm Zoe Thomas from The Wall Street Journal, and joining me to discuss this is WSJ contributor, Heidi Mitchell. ![]() Is our willingness to scan these little black and white squares putting us at risk? Authorities think so, and they're warning that unsuspecting QR code users could find themselves getting scammed. ![]() For years, they've been used to do things like verify plane tickets on our phones, but now they've replaced everything from paper menus at restaurants to business URLs and ads. One piece of tech that's become fairly ubiquitous is the QR code. Zoe Thomas: The pandemic has made using all sorts of tech a routine part of our daily lives. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated. This transcript was prepared by a transcription service.
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