Beware of the boarding pass selfie: how your vacation pics might invite hackers

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Originally published at: Beware of the boarding pass selfie: how your vacation pics might invite hackers | Boing Boing

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Since we’re this stupid, it’s worth mentioning: don’t mistake your smartphone for a hunk of eggplant and press it into a panini.

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Articles like this are notable when they refer repeatedly to what the self-reporting expert says might possibly could happen if you do X, Y, or Z, with no information whatsoever about whether these horribles actually happen with any more frequency than being attacked by a great white shark.

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Hi Bob!

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Back in the old stranger danger days, everyone was warned not to even embroider your name on jerseys or jackets in case one random person could call your name and lure you into their white free-candy van. The actual risk level was really impossibly low.

Now some people are putting hundreds of identifiable details about their life online for millions of strangers. The risk level probably isn’t as high as some of the moral panic people would have us believe. But it does seem higher than the risk of a stranger on the street.

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It seems to be the scare du jour.

https://www.google.com/search?q="boarding+pass"+selfie&tbm=nws&source=univ&tbo=u&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj2nc2s48CAAxWHnWoFHd14CxQQt8YBKAF6BAgNEAY&biw=2075&bih=1169&dpr=2

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As I posted a while ago, definitely don’t do this if you happen to be the Australian prime minister.

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I do caution the family not to share ‘encoded’ data, like those QR codes. Never know what’s in them, and related, the back of my driver license now has two or three bar codes and 2D codes as well as a big fat mag stripe and I have no idea what data are in them. Kinda pisses me off when clerks ask for my ID then immediately swipe it in a mag stripe reader or bar code scanner. When they ask, I show it to them, but maintain a tight grip so they can’t just swipe it out of my hand.

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If you have an iOS device and want to see what is encoded in these codes, the app below appears to be able to decipher the most esoteric machine readable codes.

(There is a scary level of detail on the 2D code on the back of a modern drivers license.)

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If the application devs are devious devils, they’ll also be saving a geotagged database of the scan results.

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