Maybe this is common outside of where I live and I'm blissfully unaware, but I went on a work trip recently and was surprised/disturbed by how every lunch/dinner spot was QR code menus. Multiple of these links went through a marketing platform redirect and the only reason this was obvious to me was the preview dialog on the iPhone camera showed a different domain than the page I landed on. I read the privacy policy for one of these platforms and it was not great.
It's already hard enough to get people to understand how URLs work, QR codes really don't help. Certainly it's in the best interest of corporations to scan codes in emails for security purposes, but I think it's on QR code reader producers (e.g. Apple via iOS camera) to make the concept safer somehow. I'd also really like to see well meaning people, like restaurants, create codes that do not use redirects or any other trickery and to have the link written out for the rightfully paranoid. And paper menus would be cool too...
It's already hard enough to get people to understand how URLs work, QR codes really don't help. Certainly it's in the best interest of corporations to scan codes in emails for security purposes, but I think it's on QR code reader producers (e.g. Apple via iOS camera) to make the concept safer somehow. I'd also really like to see well meaning people, like restaurants, create codes that do not use redirects or any other trickery and to have the link written out for the rightfully paranoid. And paper menus would be cool too...