With QR codes becoming more popular among restaurants and businesses, unfortunately scammers are finding creative ways to tamper with the codes to try and capture personal information from customers. Monmouth Police Department Investigator Josh Kramer offers tips to be on the lookout for:
“A lot of restaurants nowadays will have QR stickers on the tables to pull up their menu. Well, people will put a QR sticker over them that will redirect you, usually it will say something like congratulations you have won $100 and they want information. They will lure you in and have you fill out a survey and at the end of the survey you get $100 gift card or whatever it might be. They are becoming popular. They get you sucked in and obviously it looks good. I would recommend that if you are at these establishments, they will tell you what the sweepstakes are going on or for your feed back from the survey today, you have a chance to win such and such thing; verify that information. A lot of times they are just redirecting you and they are not on an actual website for that business.”
Investigator Kramer also suggests being mindful of what documents are being thrown into the trash as people will go through it to try and get any type of information they can on an individual. Documents containing personal information can be disposed of securely at the City of Monmouth Shred Days.
