I was going to post this in !britishcolumbia@lemmy.ca, but this is likely a national / international problem.
City officials say the QR codes were not authorized by either the municipality or its mobile payment provider, PayByPhone. While the stickers appeared to advertise a convenient way to pay for parking, they actually redirected drivers to a fraudulent site.
I guess it’s best to either use the machine (while jiggling the card reader), or you keep the official app pre-installed on your device
In Vancouver, I almost always see both a physical machine and the app/website options.
It might even be helpful to do away with QR codes altogether and slowly teach people to not scan random QR codes when paying.
A sign saying “Watch out for scams, do not scan any QR codes” + a visual 🚫 symbol would make it a lot harder for these scams to work