I was going to post this in !britishcolumbia@lemmy.ca, but this is likely a national / international problem.

City officials say the QR codes were not authorized by either the municipality or its mobile payment provider, PayByPhone. While the stickers appeared to advertise a convenient way to pay for parking, they actually redirected drivers to a fraudulent site.

I guess it’s best to either use the machine (while jiggling the card reader), or you keep the official app pre-installed on your device