[microcolonel]

> Almost any barcode is assumed to be private information

I don't think that's really the case, I've deliberately embedded QR codes in images on Facebook. Your feature would be very annoying if it could not be toggled off.

[function_seven]

A nice feature would be for them to decode and display the barcode info when you're uploading.

Something like “This image contains the following info: <Sensitive info you didn't mean to share>. Would you like us to blur that out? (Y/n)”

[hoschicz]

This image contains the following info: (long line of gibberish, the boarding pass ID)

User: srsly fb? OK

[atomwaffel]

Detecting if the embedded data is from a boarding pass is not difficult, nor is parsing it[0] and displaying it in a human-friendly format to "prove" that it's probably sensitive ("The boarding pass you posted belongs to John Smith and contains their American Airlines frequent flyer number. Are you sure you want to share this?")

[0] https://www.iata.org/whatwedo/stb/Documents/BCBP-Implementat...

[_asummers]

Could also very easily link to documents explaining why that could be bad for the user.

[sitkack]

Gotta weaken security for everyone because you want your embedded QR codes? Most likely the only person on FB who has done this.

[mulmen]

Isn't embedding QR codes the reason they were created in the first place? It's an optical data format designed to be easy for computers to read.

You're basically evaluating the cryptographic merits of CSV.

[sitkack]

> You're basically evaluating the cryptographic merits of CSV.

I am not. I am weighing features vs unintended harm. Yes, the airlines shouldn't be including this data in the barcodes. It is improper to expose end users to this liability. And simply telling them not to expose them isn't a solution.

But if FB can detect harmful barcodes in an image, by all means they should remove the photo.

This is no different than Github scanning for AWS creds or MongoDB passwords in repos.

[always_good]

>This is no different than Github scanning for AWS creds or MongoDB passwords in repos.

But Github doesn't do that either.

Amazon pays a contractor to scan Github repos for keys.

[FabHK]

Is there any data in the barcode that's not also printed (in plain text) on the boarding pass?

[sitkack]

There is, that is issue. DoB specifically which in the US is used (dumbly) as PII.

[bogomipz]

Yes, they were meant for efficient consumption. The 'Q" is for quick.

[jacquesm]

Facebook has a billion users. To think that anything someone does there is the first or only time it happens is probably incorrect.

[oblio]

If something is a security issue for 99% of users, the 1% will have to just accept it.

Case in point: app sandboxing. I, for one, don't want it, but it's everywhere.

[jacquesm]

What if it turns out to be 70/30 or 50/50?

Stuff like this should be configurable or over-ridable, especially when it has legitimate uses.

There will always be a balancing act between features, security and usability, to ram the needle one way and to say 'tough luck' to everybody else is not a solution because then people will try to find ways around the block.

[noir_lord]

As a programmer the problem with feature toggles is this, lets say we have 1 feature toggle with on been 1 and off been 0.

For one feature that means we have

    1,0 states (two states).

For two features we have

    1,0/1,0 (four states).

By the time you get to 10 feature toggles you have

    1111111111 (1024 possible states).

In case I wasn't clear hammering home this obvious (to us but sadly not managers usually) point, feature flags are binary and when you have 16 of them you have 65536 possible states.

Now as a programmer that frightens me because the possible paths through the system has become incredibly large for us to handle and it's a UX/UI disaster unless handled very carefully, you end up with features that interact with other features (set a do not back up flag on a file, then a different flag for always back up all files) in unpredictable ways for us and for users.

You see this complexity in things like hierarchical role based permission systems and the like.

Not sure what the solution is but I can understand why programmers and users push back on adding features (not least because as a programmer I know that doubling the complexity for 1-5% of users just seems like a poor trade off in general - there are of course specific cases where it makes sense like the 5% of users is roughly the percentage who are paying for your product etc.).

[jacquesm]

That's a very good point, in fact I always use the various global state variables of a program to explain the complexity of the program to others to show them why they can't possibly know their programs do not contain bugs simply because they have not tested all possible states.

Thank you for pointing this out, it is a very important thing to realize and it applies to configurables, global variables and feature switches alike. The more you have seen of the guts of complex systems the more amazed you will be that they work at all.

[oblio]

They should make it opt-out.

[sitkack]

That is a pedantic response. Replace "only" with some mathematically qualified low number of pictures on facebook that have legitimate barcodes in them. Is it more than 1:100_000 photos posted? Probably not.

[kalleboo]

I’ve seen people and business pages post Snapchat and LINE QR codes

[brohee]

The issue here is the airlines, not Facebook...

[sitkack]

It's both.

Facebook already scans the image, probably even for QR codes, they could prevent users from harming themselves. And airlines shouldn't expose this info in the first place.