Why is the California digital Covid-19 vaccine record QR-code broken?

Vaccinated California residents can obtain a digital COVID-19 vaccine record here:

    https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov/

What, you're back already!? Did you test the QR-code?

After a Photoshop session making wallet cards for myself and my wife, I tested the QR code. It was unreadable for each of us, on several iOS apps including Camera, and with an online QR-code reader. I've seen one Twitter report with the same experience.

It would make some sense for this to be an intentional security measure, but the FAQ says nothing about this. On the other hand, there are newspaper reports of incomplete issues, but no reporter thought to test the QR-code. One would hope that California tested the software?

2 comments

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ev1 5y ago ↗

You are using https://spec.smarthealth.cards/ I believe.

It's not camera-scan URL QR.

The FAQ on the same page: If you are at a venue that can read SMART Health Cards, present your copy of your digital vaccine record for scanning.

Syzygies 5y ago ↗

Thanks. I came back to update this post. Yes, it's a "shc" URI followed by a long numeric string. This baffles most QR code readers, but https://zxing.org/w/decode works.

The "shc" URI scheme is indeed registered by SMART Health Cards.