Call me paranoid, but I've taken to not scanning "public" QR codes any longer [1].
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/07/are-qr-...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/07/are-qr-...
Also, QR codes obfuscate the request that is being sent.
There is an inherent security risk... it is trivial, as the OPs article suggests, to print out a QR code, cover an existing public one, and send people to a phishing site. Unless people are being very careful about what sites they are on, they could easily be scammed.