The majority of QR codes are spam, new survey claims

• New research claims most QR code emails are spam
• QR codes can easily bypass anti-spam filters, Cisco Talos warns
• 'Quishing' attacks are becoming more common

The dangers of clicking an unknown or suspicious link should have been drilled into most of us by now, but many don’t realize scanning a malicious QR code from an unknown source could be just as damaging.

Despite QR codes steadily gaining popularity over the last few years, research from Cisco Talos has claimed many people still don’t consider the threats they could pose.

A driving factor to this is the fact that anti-spam filters aren’t designed to recognize that a QR code is present in an image, so they overwhelmingly evade detection - with the team saying that although only 1 in every 500 emails contains a QR code, a staggering 60% of those are spam.

'Quishing ...