What's the deal with visible QR codes appearing on digital ads?

yeahdef 3y ago ↗

I have seen this a lot lately. I am curious to understand how these are used and/or what benefit they provide?

rolph 3y ago ↗

drive by exploits

mattl 3y ago ↗

What happens if you take a photo of the ad? Does it takes you to the website?

Festro 3y ago ↗

I've not seen this before. Looks more like visual artefacting from a graphics processing error to me on first glance.

Where was this specific ad? Might try to find one in the wild myself?

If it is a QR code it seems like maybe some kind of proprietary watermarking tech to track ads for some very specific purpose. My phone either can't lock onto it or can't read it.

yeahdef 3y ago ↗

I see them all the time. Here’s an example on drudgereport. https://imgur.com/a/hOl9x2m

I am using an iPhone 13 browsing via chrome. iOS 17.0

yeahdef 3y ago ↗

Also occurs in safari

tatumj 3y ago ↗

I found a reddit thread which claims it's related to this bug in iOS 17 Beta 2: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/ios-ipados-release...

yeahdef 3y ago ↗

Found my answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/14hyn3n/pink_qrcode_li...

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/ios-ipados-release...

What's the deal with visible QR codes appearing on digital ads? (imgur.com)

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