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The barcode is PDF417 and there are phone apps that scan and convert it to text (http://www.pdf417.mobi/ http://www.pdf417.mobi/) - in case you do not want to s
by mynegation 11y ago
The barcode is PDF417 and there are phone apps that scan and convert it to text (http://www.pdf417.mobi/ http://www.pdf417.mobi/) - in case you do not want to send this to some website. I played with it, decoding my own boarding passes, but did not find anything that was not already printed on the pass. Granted there was a lot of abbreviated gibberish which may have been something sensitive.
- skewart 11y agoHow exactly is using a random app any safer than using a random website? Or, what other benefit could it have? Both an app and a website are somebody else's code running on your local machine and (often) communicating with a remote server. A random app could just as easily grab your info from the barcode.
- leoedin 11y agoUsing an app can be safer than a website. 1. If the app doesn't have permissions to use the internet (possibly Android only, although the Android 6 discussion seems to suggest that there's ways round this). 2. If you use the app while disconnected from the internet and ensure that it isn't running when you reconnect. Neither of those is possible when you upload the image to be parsed online.
- skewart 11y agoThose are both hypothetical that are very far from typical ways that people use apps on their phones. An app might upload the image to a remote server. A website might parse it locally through JS - maybe disabling your connection, submitting your image, parsing it, then wiping your cached website data would be just as "safe". The problem is the knee-jerk reaction that "some random website" is dangerous while some random app is not. You have to assume both are equally risky in this situation.