QR Scanner (Privacy Friendly)

QR Codes turn into more and more necessary. In some areas they have even changed the normal barcode. A QR Code is ready to retailer as a lot as seven thousand characters and subsequently is qualified for more complex content material, e.g. vCards. Hence nowadays QR Codes can these days be found on practically each commercial poster and animate the person to scan it with his smartphone. Thus, it is not needed take a hand written observe, it is sufficient to scan the QR Code. Correspondingly, there are already many QR Code scanner apps out there in the Google Play Store. It belongs to the Privacy Friendly Apps group developed by the analysis group SECUSO at Technische Universität Darmstadt. More data can be found an secuso.org/pfa

Our Privacy Friendly QR Scanner App differs with respect to two features:

1. The Privacy Friendly QR Scanner App only requires the minimal amount of permissions, particularly:

• In category Camera/Microphone: Camera

The camera is used to scan QR Code.

• In class Other: Vibrate and Flashlight

The vibration is used to provide feedback if the scan was profitable. The flashlight is used to help the camera in reading the QR Code efficiently in dangerous lighting situations.

Most of the QR Code scanner apps available in the Google Play Store need several permissions on prime of the ones wanted: e.g. reading contacts or your name log and retrieving knowledge from the Internet. Most of these necessities aren't necessary for the functionality they really are supposed to provide.

2. The Privacy Friendly QR Scanner App helps its users in detecting malicious hyperlinks: QR Codes provide new potentialities for an attacker, as QR Codes can contain malicious links, i.e. links to phishing webpages or webpages from which malware would mechanically be downloaded. Therefore you will need to fastidiously verify the hyperlink earlier than accessing the corresponding webpage. Since it is difficult for the consumer to identify malicious hyperlinks, the Privacy friendly QR Scanner App supports the consumer by highlighting the domain (e.g. in that case for https://www.secuso.org, secuso.org can be highlighted). To keep away from not checking the link and specifically the highlighted area carefully, the app provides information about potential fraud and its users need to confirm that they checked the link and it's trustworthy. Note, the data shown after scanning an URL based mostly QR Code just isn't personalized for each URL. Hence, it ought to be considered as an advice for the person the means to behave in general.

Similar to other available QR Code scanning apps, the Privacy Friendly QR Scanner App supports the following formats:

• text

• product codes

• phone number

• sms

• e-mail address

• e mail

• contact data (e.g. vCards)

• URL

• WiFi (limited: can not connect to community automatically)

Bar codes are also supported.