Tag: qr codes

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePWEJ2cNMog]

The service has now been rolled out in order to help to make traveling more convenient.

Google has just announced that they have rolled out their automatic digital boarding passes based on QR codes through their Google Now service in order to allow travelers to use their mobile devices for a number of convenient purposes.

The Google Now service helps users stay up to date on everything from sports scores to weather conditions.

This latest announcement has revealed that the anticipated QR codes and associated mobile boarding passes have now gone live. It was made through the @Android Twitter account held by the company. The posting came with a video that helped to demonstrate this brand new feature to the service.

The QR codes help airline travelers to avoid unnecessary lines and boarding pass kiosks.

They also provide more convenience over having to print out the boarding passes at home, as the QR codes and additional information is all displayed on the mobile device screen. For individuals who already have smartphones and who bring them with them whenever they travel, it eliminates a number of steps that can help to reduce the number of hassles along the way.

The service is possible by accessing the flight confirmation emails that the smartphone user has on his or her device, and then automatically draws up the boarding pass based on that information. In order to actually use this pass. The travelers can simply check in with the airline as they usually would with a paper boarding pass.

Once the traveler has checked in, the Google Now automatically retrieves the digital boarding pass which is assigned its own unique QR codes. This is done on behalf of the traveler, without any additional required effort. Aside from the barcode, it also contains the terminal, gate, and seat number, as would be assigned on a printed boarding pass.

When the passenger arrives at the gate, the QR codes can be displayed on the device screen so that they can be scanned by the attendant. So far, the service works only with certain specific airlines – which have not yet been identified by Google. However, this information will likely be released over time. At the moment Google Now is available only on devices running Android 4.1 or higher.

Mobile marketers love these barcodes , but as consumers embrace them, unscrupulous efforts grow.

It’s difficult to open a magazine or a flyer, these days, without seeing QR codes in all of the adds, but just as their popularity grows, so does their attractiveness to unethical individuals who would take advantage of this opportunity to cause harm.

These little black and white codes may look simple enough, but they may now pose an underlying threat.

It took quite a while for consumers to start to feel the enthusiasm for QR codes that mobile marketers have felt from the start. This has meant that individuals who would seek to use them for harmful purposes have left them alone for quite some time. But as the scanning trend continues to grow, so have the hazards associated with the activity.

Malicious QR codes have started to pop up here and there now that the technology has become commonplace.

Though it is still rare for malicious QR codes to appear, they have started showing up on occasion, and their impact can be quite damaging. This is because there are far more mobile device users that have barcode scanners than there are those who have protection against the type of attack that a tainted scan could present.

QR codes are meant to make it easy to redirect a device user to an app or a website to provide information, generate a download, view a video, or even to help buy a product or make a charitable donation. However, when a permissive reader app has been used, even a seemingly harmless scan could place the user’s privacy at risk.

The most common strategy that is used in order to encourage malicious barcode scans is simply to place a sticker with the harmful code overtop of the legitimate square. Therefore, one of the best efforts that a device user can make to protect his or her security is simply to double check that the QR codes they scan are printed directly onto materials from companies that they trust, and aren’t printed onto a sticker. Downloading a scanner app with built in protection is also a highly recommended activity.