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Comment by lvs | Hacker News Reader

The OG Barcode Scanner app is getting absolutely throttled with negative reviews. But this posting seems to be about a clone app by a different developer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode_Scanner_(application)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.zxi...

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My phone was affected by this, and I can confirm I had the original barcode scanner app in your first link installed, and I'd had it installed for years.

I now use Google Lens through the default phone app.

I had this one (by ZXing Team) and never noticed any negative behaviour, but given that the default camera app now supports QR Code scanning I don't see a reason to keep the Barcode Scanner app.

Which default camera app? From which version?

(The proliferation of manufacturer camera apps is one of the worst things about android)

Good point. Whatever the default is for a Samsung S10e. I agree that the forking by all the manufacturers is a PITA.

I wonder if there's a coordinated effort to exploit barcode reader apps, because (at least where I'm from) its becoming a government mandated Covid tracing thing to use a QR code to "check in" to certain classes of businesses/venues?

I bet there's a _huge_ increase in use of QR code scanning apps compared to this the last year...

Its kind of amazing that there isnt an official qr code scanner app preinstalled on phones given how ubiquitous QR codes are.

I think Android 9 and up has QR code scanning built into the camera app, same as similarly recent vintage iOS. iOS is somewhat less problematic given that ~98% of devices are running current or one version old OSes, where the Android fleet has a huge install base who won't or can't upgrade from pre Android 9 versions. Last time I looked it was still over 40% of all Android devices.

I've side loaded LineageOS into a few old old Android devices, Galaxy S3 and S4s, but my S6Edge is still running the Android7 OS it has when Samsung abandoned it. My similar vintage 2015 iPhones 6S is running fully current iOS14 - but it is the oldest Apple device that'll run it. (To be fair, my Samsung S3 vintage iPhone 5 can't run anything newer that iOS10.3).

There is, on Android point the camera at a QR code and it will scan/read it.

I think both Android and iOS have been shipping a built in QR code scanner for some years now.

Wechat had 1.17 billion users last year and has had a QR scanner built in for many years now. Given that you need the app to login to their web or desktop applications, it can be presumed that that many users have the app installed, possibly making WeChat the most popular QR code scanner app.

Interestingly, I just checked the QR code scanner app I have on one of my Android devices (A Samsung S6Edge abandoned and unupdateable from Android7 - without jumping through some hoops I've not been inclined to do yet).

As soon as I opened it, it popped up a dialog box with non ascii text in it (Arabic or maybe Thai script?) with yes/no options, for all I know asking fro permission to steal my contact list... I just closed the app and uninstalled it.

It was "QR code scanner free" by Application4u. It does disclose "Contains ads". 4.5 stars, 10million+ downloads. Has some expected permissions (camera) and a few less expected ones (storage/sd card) and a few very suspicious ones (full network access, prevent phone from sleeping, connect and disconnect from wifi, view wifi connections - I guess maybe these are needed for the ad serving in the free version? Seems like over reach to me...)

It is also open source: https://github.com/zxing/zxing and hasn't had an update since 2019.

So will google fix these reviews like they did with RH? These are clearly wrong unlike RH...

Yeah it's a really bad idea that they just called the app "Barcode Crossing" instead of "Zebra Crossing" or whatever. Completely generic and impossible to defend the brand.

This is a very important distinction.

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