The King of Doodles

 

Image from author

It was a year ago, in a conference room in Utrecht. A strange room it was, because one of the walls consisted almost entirely of large shutters – on the inside that is. I still don't really know what was hiding behind those shutters. But that's not the point. The point is that I sat next to the King of Doodles. And that I wanted to do something with that in my blog, but couldn't find a link with security. Until now.

A doodle, as explained by Wikipedia, is a drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. You know, like someone is sitting in a meeting with a writing pad on the table and they’re drawing all kinds of frills on it: doodles. Well, that colleague I was sitting next to at the time, boy was he skilled at that. He scribbled like his life depended on it - that's why I crowned him the King of Doodles for myself. And I watched with fascination. What was also fascinating was that the drawing didn't seem to distract him in the slightest: he just joined the conversation, with a lot of sensible input in fact.

Recently, the same meeting took place again. Again in Utrecht, but now in a different place, without indoor shutters. The King of Doodles was there again, and he was scribbling as usual. We talked about it during a break, and I confessed that I had been wanting to blog about this spectacle for a year, but couldn't find the right hook. And that ate at me, because, as regular readers know, I can usually give the craziest observations such a twist that they suddenly have a connection to my profession. Only those cursed doodles, they resist my urge to write. Until another colleague looked at the drawing and casually said: “That looks like a QR code.” I looked at him in bewilderment: that was it! There is a lot to write about QR codes from my profession.

QR codes can no longer be ignored in everyday life. You come across them everywhere. “Scan me!” they shout to unsuspecting passers-by, “I'll give you information!” They are often featured on pamphlets and advertisements. If you want more information after reading it, you can do so by scanning that QR code. But you sometimes come across QR codes separately. On a sticker that someone just put on a traffic light, for example. Or on a shop window. They are much more mysterious.

The problem with QR codes is that we humans cannot read them. So you have no idea where such a code will take you. It can just contain a link to www.scammers.com (this domain name is still available, by the way). In my memory, it used to work that if you scanned a QR code, you immediately went to the linked website. That is now different (better): a pop-up shows you the destination and then you can still decide whether you want to go there. But then you often don't know much – or do you have any idea if something like s5.productinfo.com is a bona fide site?

Now you don't have to worry immediately that a QR code next to a recipe in your supermarket’s magazine will take you to a rogue site that steals your data or provides your device with a nice virus. However, I'd be a bit more careful with QR codes that you come across in the wild that have no context. Or with codes on advertising posters or shops. They have context, but maybe someone has pasted their own code over them; then you think you are going to fineshop.com but you still end up at scammers.com.

My advice: make conscious use of QR codes. See if you understand where they're going, and if that doesn't seem right, or you don't have a clear context (like with that yummy recipe), better back off. You can always google it by hand to get more information on the subject in question.

At those Utrecht meetings I mentioned, our internal bloggers and the intranet editors met. The editors treated us to lunch and figures that showed that our blogs are important crowd pullers. But for me, the most important thing was that I can finally feature my esteemed fellow blogger, the King of Doodles, in my blog.

The Security (b)log returns after the summer holidays.

 

And in the big bad world…

• it is a bad idea to give everyone the same password
• MITRE has published the latest list of 25 most dangerous vulnerabilities.
• Rian van Rijbroek now officially is a charlatan.
• Android contains a secret browser.
• Russia brags that only 1% of their fake accounts would be discovered.
• artificial intelligence threatens our security.
• the big tech companies are resisting British legislation that wants to weaken cryptography.
• the UK government has a clear goal in mind in this crypto issue.
• this discussion is also raging in the Netherlands.
• this company is better at storing lemonade leak-proof than data.
• you have to take cash with you when you fill up in Canada because of a cyber attack
• Ireland wants to ban criticism of their privacy watchdog and big tech companies.