Criminals commit fraud with QR codes: “Customers lose up to 300 euros” | Tech
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You can no longer pay at EnergyVision charging stations by scanning a QR code. The company shut down the feature after criminals covered it with stickers that redirected you to a fake website. Anyone who paid will lose 300 euros.
The company operates charging stations in Brussels, among other places. These are equipped with QR codes to accept payments in addition to a card reader for the well-known charging cards. “Even though we are not in favor of this ourselves,” the company said. “But we are required to do so by the government.” And that’s where things went wrong: criminals covered the QR codes at about 20 locations with their own stickers.
“Anyone who tried to load via such a code was shown a web page to pay. If you did that, you would receive an error message, but 300 euros would be taken from your account. You were then redirected to the correct page where you could pay again, which of course worked. This meant you could still charge and it was not immediately noticeable that you had been robbed,” says Maarten Michielssens, CEO of EnergyVision.
QR codes unsafe
QR codes are appearing more and more often. For example, during the corona crisis they replaced menus to avoid having to disinfect them every time. You could then view the menu via a website on your smartphone. But we continued to use them: in bus shelters to view the bus schedule, on parking meters to pay and therefore also at charging stations.
Five percent of our customers pay with that QR code
Maarten Michielssens, CEO EnergyVision
“We immediately filed a complaint,” says Michielssens. “We have transferred the addresses of the charging stations to the police and also contacted the FPS Economy. We hope that the police can look on cameras to see who stuck those stickers,” said the CEO of EnergyVision. “Fortunately, only 5 percent of our customers pay via those codes, most of them use charging cards. But it concerns about a hundred victims who each lost 300 euros.”
EnergyVision would not be the first provider of charging stations to have to deal with criminals who paste over QR codes, our editors have learned. Anyone who thinks they are the victim should contact their bank immediately.
Codes on displays
Our technology journalist Kenneth Dée has been warning about the dangers of (public) QR codes for some time. Actually, in most cases it’s a bad idea to scan them. It is much better to use alternatives such as charging cards or special apps. If necessary, even your regular bank card, something that is being offered at more and more (fast) charging stations.
Michielssens is also thinking of a different system: “For example, you can install charging stations with displays that occasionally show a different code,” he said. But for the time being these are offered by relatively few manufacturers.
Also read:
“Never scan a QR code.” New phenomenon: cyber criminals use ‘quishing’ to cheat you out of money (+)
Biggest cyber gangster ever finally unmasked: “Thousands of victims, also in Belgium”
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