So, does the fake ticket instruct people to send the $100 to the normal court, or to some PO box?

I was pretty disappointed to hear the guy say 'you would see the ticket if a fake if you start looking at it', but everything they mention besides the wrong date is something a normal citizen would ever know are faked, like a bad officer ID number, or a QR code...then they say "city tickets do not have QR codes" in a tone that implies that EVERYONE knows that...but I saw a QR code on the parking meter, so why would anyone ASSUME that one on a ticket is fake?

It's just by luck that they are only Rick Rolling people. That link could just as easily be to a virus that locks your computer unless you pay a ransom. Scary stuff.

At the end, either that reporter is like 4'6" or that meter is like, 6ft tall...

The meter is up on the curb so it's a few inches higher. Here is a better angle.
https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
He is like 5'10

@Zawash is that you?

OK, thx. Was bugging me.


Looks an awful lot like a microphone in that clip though.

If I lived in that city, I'd stop feeding the meter, and if I got a real ticket I would claim that I thought it was fake because of this news story. Should work once...

How is it scary, exactly? How would you scan a QR code into your COMPUTER? And the only way you can get a virus is by clicking a link and downloading and installing software. Just visiting a website won't do that. At most, it could crash your browser via JavaScript. There's literally zero risk.

I consider a cell phone a hand held computer. I started computing on an Apple2, so the power of a cell phone certainly meets the definition in my eyes.
Also, my PC has a decent camera built in. One could just as easily scan it into their PC, no? If not, why not?
I've never have a cell phone (FREAK!...What?! Who said that?!), so I don't really know how those QR codes work.

I just assumed that phones are nearly as vulnerable as computers, and I know that just opening a web page CAN infect your system, even with anti-virus software and without clicking/intentionally installing anything. Some viruses auto-download once you're on the site with no notice, or a fake notice pretending to be a 'I've read the terms of service' or 'I agree' boxes and downloading to hidden files in the background in ways only IT specialists would notice.
I know that I've seen many reports claiming that many 'fremium' games include Trojan horse programs that track your phone usage, location, and in some cases steal your information. I'm just guessing that the same thing is possible without the game attached. It wouldn't be difficult on a PC to use a link/web page to auto-infect visitors, I'm just guessing the same goes for 'hand held computers'.

I think "literally zero risk" is a bit much. Possibly extremely unlikely, but certainly not really zero risk.

Most QR reading apps show you the URL or other QR code contents before doing anything with it. They don't just go to the URL automatically unless you tell it to do so (none that I've used anyway). I'm assuming if there were a program for desktop/laptop PCs that reads QR codes, it would behave similarly. Standard QR codes can't really contain anything other than text data, because they are extremely limited in the number of bytes they can represent. Generally, they're used to store a website URL or similar type of thing.

I've never heard of a web-based attack that would automatically infect you. There would be some sort of confirmation or you'd need to run some piece of software manually in order to get infected. JavaScript doesn't have the ability to actually break out of the browser, so there's nothing it could really do at a system level. If it downloaded software, you would need to let it install before there was any risk.

I've heard of screensavers, back in the like, Windows 95/98 days, where if you used it, you could become infected. But that's no different. Screensavers (at least back then) were nothing more than specialized .exe files, so you're just running a program like any other thing.

If you're dumb enough to click a link and then install the software it downloads, then you're not exercising proper basic security principles and you kind of deserve to learn a lesson anyway.

Ahhh, OK. I thought they acted like a link and would just take you directly to a website.
Perhaps things have changed. I've been computing for decades, and it at least USED to be the case that you could be infected simply by opening a malicious web page. Since I have banked and shopped on my PC, I'm overly cautious to not get infected, and don't just assume that old security holes are plugged. That means not going to links I don't recognize, not installing software I don't need or know exactly what I'm installing and where it comes from, and never opening emails from people I don't know.
Even with all that paranoia, I've had attacks that froze my computer and demanded money to unfreeze it, and that somehow remained in effect after restarts, like it somehow installed itself into my startup file. I did not install anything those times, simply opened a web page that was (apparently) infected and was attacked. For many people, these attacks work and their computers are bricked and they are blackmailed. Had I not known how to clear my temporary files, including hidden files, and clean out my startup folder, I would have a dead PC. One instance required me to completely wipe and re-install windows to remove the infection, as it wouldn't boot up at all.
That's why I also backup all my files on a memory stick that remains unplugged.

Being paranoid, I may go a bit farther than I need to, but better safe than sorry. I can't afford to have my identity stolen or my PC bricked.