QR Codes - Useful, but here's why "free" may sacrifice privacy

I began with this goal:

Generate a QR Code for my new business card that sends the person directly to the home page of our trueblade.com website.

I queried duckduckgo.com: generate qr code

That leads to a few ads as well as a series of websites that can instantly generate many types of QR Codes with a variety of options. Many of the websites in the search results are easy to use and quickly generate a nice looking, fully-functioning QR code. Most of the websites are free but require registration.

However, many of those websites generate QR Codes that first take the user to an unknown and sometimes undisclosed redirection website, which takes note of the request and then sends the user along to your website.

From a privacy and speed of loading perspective, there's no advantage in first sending your potential customer to the redirection website. Moreover, you probably don't know much about who is doing the initial redirection and what they're doing with the information learned from the redirection.

After learning the above, my QR Code requirements are:

1. I will only use a "clean" QR Code that sends the user directly to a page on our website, and
2. I wanted to be able to change the color of my QR Code to match other content that we already have.

That's where everything starts to get complicated.

Below is a QR Code that I generated that takes you directly to True Blade's "Contact Us" webpage. I colored this QR code with the same blue that we already use on our website:

This QR Code was generated using Adobe InDesign version 16.3 x64, then brought into Adobe Photoshop version 22.4.3 for coloring and saving in .jpg format. I also used a Photoshop plugin called QR checker to confirm there was no redirect.

I understand that the above is beyond the capacity of most people to do by themselves, and it took me several hours to understand and learn what to do. But if you want a clean QR Code that doesn't have a hidden redirection, you will need to use similar software tools and confirm that there will be no redirection.

If you'd like your own QR Code without redirection, reach out and tell me what you need. I'll either do it for free or ask that you pay for my time to get it done. Satisfaction is guaranteed, as always.