The Palm Beach Police Department wants to educate the community to a new scam involving QR codes.  This new scam is known as “brushing” and involves receiving an unexpected gift or package in the mail or from a parcel delivery service (e.g. Amazon or other retailers).  The gift or package will have a recipient’s address but will not have sender information.  When the package is opened there will often be a QR code that advises to scan it to find out who sent the gift.  If the QR code is scanned, the recipient can unknowingly send information to a scammer, compromise their phone, or be directed to a malicious website.

If this happens to you, you can keep or throw away the item, but DO NOT scan the QR code.  QR codes are “quick response” codes visually depicted as a square image that you can scan with your phone’s camera.  To help keep yourself safe from bad QR codes, the FBI advises the following:

• Do not scan a randomly found QR code.
• Be suspicious if, after scanning a QR code, the site asks for a password or login info.
• Do not scan QR codes received in emails or text messages unless you know they are legitimate. Call the sender to confirm.
• Some scammers are physically pasting bogus codes over legitimate ones. If it looks as though a code has been tampered with, don’t use it.

Additionally, be mindful of callers or contacts that request to be paid or provided funds via purchased gift cards.  This is a red flag for scams and one of the most common ways that scammers make money from victims.  As always, you can contact the Palm Beach Police Department at (561) 838-5454 with any scam concerns or if you’ve become a victim.  More information on current scams can be found by visiting the FTC’s Scam Awareness website.