Cybercriminals who are fond of food have a Christmas present for them.
Another reason to pay first before posting: A Chinese customer was shocked after an innocent social-media mishap left her with a $90,000 bill.
The incident that led to bankruptcy occurred on November 23, while the woman, who was identified only as Wang, and a friend were dining at a hotpot restaurant in Kunming, Southwest China, according to The South China Morning Post.
She decided to take a photo of her food for social media, as is common among many restaurant customers today.
The diner included an iPhone photo of the QR code on the table, which customers could scan to pay.
She received a check for 430,000 yuan, or around $90,300, shortly after posting the photos on WeChat.
It turned out that despite posting only the photos to her contacts, someone — or more than one malicious entity — had used the code to charge her a ridiculous amount of money for food.
The illegally “comped’ dishes included 2580 portions of squid (a popular dish in the area), 1850 portions of duck blood, and 9990 portions of shrimp paste.
China Daily reported that even after Wang realized her mistake and deleted the picture, she was still inundated by bootleg orders. She attributed this to someone who downloaded the photo before it had been erased.
Staff did not make the besieged eater pay for the extras and instead moved her to another table to differentiate between the genuine orders and the frauds.
The restaurant owners were unable to find the culprits or stop them from adding new charges.
The restaurant’s ordering system has been revised to limit orders within a specified distance.
Wang called the entire ordeal, despite being digitally hornswoggled, a learning opportunity.
Other WeChat users also shared similar incidents of their QR codes being hijacked. This illustrates the dangers of the digitalized ordering system.
Lin Xiaoming, a lawyer from Sichuan Province, advised that online ordering platforms implement anti-theft security measures. These include requiring customers to make a payment before ordering and penalizing thieves of food with credit score reductions and other deterrents.
QR codes aren’t just a security concern.
Many diners in the US believe that our system of scanning a code in order to display the menu has ruined the dining experience.
