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Why do I see scans from places where I have not placed my QR Code?

  • Updated

This guide is relevant to Standard and Pro users of Scanova QR Code Generator.

If you are viewing scanning activity of your QR Codes from the Analytics section and seeing inconsistent location data (such as scans from cities/countries where you haven't deployed your Dynamic QR Codes), then it could be due to any of the following reasons:

  1. Geo-location Accuracy: When a Scanova Dynamic QR Code is scanned by a mobile device, Scanova receives the IP address of the network (cellular/Wifi) the scanning device is connected to. Using the IP address information, Scanova determines the country and city data using an locally-saved database provided by a third-party GeoIP2 data service provider. The accuracy level of this data varies by city and country. It is possible that due to lower accuracy of the scanning region, the recorded location is incorrect. To check accuracy level of your country, see: GeoIP2 Accuracy
  2. Traveling Devices: If a mobile device SIM card or cellular network is registered in the United States and the user travels to Canada and scans a QR Code, the IP address that Scanova will receive is of United States, even though the scanning location is in Canada
  3. Security Tests: To tackle the menace of phishing and other security threats, our security protocols run automated tests on the Scanova short URLs encoded into Dynamic QR Codes. This may result in 1-2 additional scans from other countries
  4. Crawling Bots: Because Scanova Dynamic QR Codes are encoded with Scanova short URLs (https://scnv.io/ABCD), it is possible that these URLs are crawled by bots (such as Google's Search Engine Crawler, etc.). However, we make all attempts to ensure that these URLs remain non-indexed to search engines
  5. Publicity: If you have deployed a QR Code marketing campaign in the US in a restaurant and a news media agency has taken a clear photograph of the campaign material with the QR Code and published an online article, then it is possible for anyone to scan the QR Code from around the globe. This means that if you are large brand and used to getting coverage from the media, then scans can come from around the globe if the QR Code is published online

Hope this was helpful. If you still have unanswered questions or concerns, please reach out to us at support@scanova.io.