Stories of disheveled families affected by a Hamas attack during a music festival in Israel continue to emerge. One such story is of an American dad Eyal Waldma, the father of a 24-year-old American, Danielle Waldman, who was killed in the Hamas assault.

With no way to reach out to his daughter who met her untimely demise during the attack by the Islamist militant group, the father had no way but to track her phone and Apple watch. But before the news of her tragic death befell&nbsp;Eyal, he was clinging to the hope that his daughter had been taken hostage and not been killed.

Danielle, a native of Palo Alto, California, had been attending the festival with her boyfriend of six years. But, their lives were tragically cut short during the vicious Hamas assault, Eyal recounted to CNN.

Eyal got to know about the killing of his daughter just hours before speaking to the media outlet. His beloved daughter was one of the victims of the attack.

Also Read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/hamas-claims-israeli-strikes-kill-13-hostages-including-foreigners-in-gaza-646271">Hamas claims Israeli strikes kill 13 hostages, including foreigners, in Gaza</a>

"Each and everyone that met her have loved her,” Eyal said. “She’s done nothing wrong and nothing bad to anyone.”

<h2>A harrowing revelation</h2>

Employing the tracking features of Danielle's phone and Apple watch, her family managed to locate the site where their youngest daughter met her unfortunate end.

Eyal described the nightmarish scenario in which his daughter's car appeared to be encircled and attacked by members of Hamas.

Also Read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/amid-raging-israel-hamas-war-indias-delhi-placed-on-security-alert-646205">Amid raging Israel-Hamas war, India’s capital Delhi placed on security alert</a>

"I can see&nbsp;exactly how she was murdered from two directions by at least three to five people had attacked the car," he reportedly revealed and added, "From the shells that we have found, there were at least three guns that were shooting at the car."

<h2>Love story's tragic end&nbsp;</h2>

Eyal recounted his last conversation with Danielle, during which she had joyfully mentioned her plans to marry her boyfriend in the near future.

Watch |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/videos/israel-palestine-war-shocking-gruesome-images-of-babies-killed-during-hamas-attack-released-646370">Israel-Palestine war: Shocking, gruesome images of babies killed during Hamas attack released</a>

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The couple had recently moved into a new apartment, complete with a dog, just a month before the tragedy struck.

“They had only been there for a few weeks, now we will need to see what to do with all their belongings,” Eyal said. In the face of such adversity, he said,&nbsp;“Israel will stay strong and be strong for the long term".

(With inputs from agencies)

Disclaimer: WION takes utmost care to accurately and responsibly report ongoing developments on the Israel-Palestine conflict after the Hamas attacks. However, we cannot independently verify the authenticity of all statements, photos and videos.

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Stories of disheveled families affected by a Hamas attack during a music festival in Israel continue to emerge. One such story is of an American dad Eyal Waldma, the father of a 24-year-old American, Danielle Waldman, who was killed in the Hamas assault.

Stories of disheveled families affected by a Hamas attack during a music festival in Israel continue to emerge. One such story is of an American dad Eyal Waldma, the father of a 24-year-old American, Danielle Waldman, who was killed in the Hamas assault. With no way to reach out to his daughter who met her untimely demise during the attack by the Islamist militant group, the father had no way but to track her phone and Apple watch. But before the news of her tragic death befell Eyal, he was clinging to the hope that his daughter had been taken hostage and not been killed. Danielle, a native of Palo Alto, California, had been attending the festival with her boyfriend of six years. But, their lives were tragically cut short during the vicious Hamas assault, Eyal recounted to CNN. Eyal got to know about the killing of his daughter just hours before speaking to the media outlet. His beloved daughter was one of the victims of the attack. Also Read | Hamas claims Israeli strikes kill 13 hostages, including foreigners, in Gaza "Each and everyone that met her have loved her,” Eyal said. “She’s done nothing wrong and nothing bad to anyone.” A harrowing revelation Employing the tracking features of Danielle's phone and Apple watch, her family managed to locate the site where their youngest daughter met her unfortunate end. Eyal described the nightmarish scenario in which his daughter's car appeared to be encircled and attacked by members of Hamas. Also Read | Amid raging Israel-Hamas war, India’s capital Delhi placed on security alert "I can see exactly how she was murdered from two directions by at least three to five people had attacked the car," he reportedly revealed and added, "From the shells that we have found, there were at least three guns that were shooting at the car." Love story's tragic end Eyal recounted his last conversation with Danielle, during which she had joyfully mentioned her plans to marry her boyfriend in the near future. Watch | Israel-Palestine war: Shocking, gruesome images of babies killed during Hamas attack released × The couple had recently moved into a new apartment, complete with a dog, just a month before the tragedy struck. “They had only been there for a few weeks, now we will need to see what to do with all their belongings,” Eyal said. In the face of such adversity, he said, “Israel will stay strong and be strong for the long term". (With inputs from agencies) Disclaimer: WION takes utmost care to accurately and responsibly report ongoing developments on the Israel-Palestine conflict after the Hamas attacks. However, we cannot independently verify the authenticity of all statements, photos and videos. WATCH WION LIVE HERE You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here. ×

American man traces daughter's murder location via tracking features of her phone, Apple watch

Frances Haugen first met Jeff Horwitz, a tech-industry reporter for The Wall Street Journal, in early December on a hiking trail near the Chabot Space &amp; Science Center in Oakland, California.

She liked that he seemed thoughtful, and she liked that he had written about Facebook’s role in transmitting violent Hindu nationalism in India, a particular interest of hers. She also got the impression that he would support her as a person, rather than as a mere source who could supply him with the inside information she had picked up during her nearly two years as a product manager at Facebook.

"I auditioned Jeff for a while," Haugen told me in a phone interview from her home in Puerto Rico, "and one of the reasons I went with him is that he was less sensationalistic than other choices I could have made."

She became one of the greatest sources of the century, turning over the tens of thousands of pages of internal documents she had collected. Starting Sept. 13, the Journal justified her confidence with a meticulous rollout that included 11 major articles by Horwitz and other reporters cleverly packaged under a catchy rubric, The Facebook Files.

Key revelations included how Facebook executives handled politicised lies, including Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud. Often, the company chose to let misinformation spread widely, to keep more people logging on. The series also noted the lengths that Facebook went to in its desperation to hang on to its audience as young people drifted away from its platforms.

The Journal also produced a podcast episode introducing Haugen as poised, incisive and intensely moral, a depiction that Horwitz told me he agrees with after much reporting, but which also amounted to white-glove treatment of a treasured source.

So there was an uncomfortable moment Oct. 7, when a communications firm working with Haugen invited Horwitz and two of his editors to a Zoom call with a group that would grow to include journalists from 17 other U.S. media outlets.

On the call, Haugen offered to share redacted versions of the trove of Facebook documents under an embargo to be set by the group. The firm, founded by former Barack Obama aide Bill Burton, would help manage the process. After she made her pitch, Horwitz and his colleagues found themselves in a strange position: The source who had provided them with the stuff of so many exclusive scoops now seemed to be going rogue.

"This is a little awkward," Jason Dean, an editor at the Journal, said on the call, according to three participants.

The Journal team left before the call was over. Since then, journalists at The Atlantic, The Associated Press, CNN, NBC News, Fox Business and other outlets, including The New York Times, have been poring over the first tranche of Haugen’s documents, along with a parallel group in Europe, with a plan to publish their findings Monday (although stories began trickling out Friday night).

We live in a time of megaleaks, enabled by the same digital technology that allows us to surveil one another and document our lives as never before. These leaks have given the leakers and their brokers a new kind of power over the news media, raising tricky questions about how their revelations should enter the public sphere. There are questions, in particular, on the balance of power between the sources of vital information and the reporters who benefit from them.

Some leaks, including U.S. military and State Department files, emerged on WikiLeaks or nameless servers in the form of massive data dumps; others, including Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency files and The Intercept’s revelations of America’s drone wars, came about after journalists had gained sources’ trusts.

Reports on the Panama Papers, based on the leaking of more than 11 million documents, and other examinations of global tax evasion that followed it were brokered through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which managed a collaboration among hundreds of journalists around the world. They read the documents, as well as one another’s stories, on a secure server before coordinating the rollout of their articles on social media.

In some cases, the leaker or hacker seems to be the one who controls how and when information is released. That’s how it went in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, when a Kremlin-directed cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee led to the devastatingly timed publication of the committee’s private documents on WikiLeaks.

In other instances, a key source may yield to a unified group of journalists — at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists or elsewhere — who add layers of reporting and analysis to the raw material.

"You can’t afford to have the source dictate the story," Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, said in an interview.

Haugen chose a middle path, one that appears to have captured the best of both arrangements, from her perspective, while also foiling Facebook’s attempts to contain the story.

First, she handed her documents to the Journal for a boutique rollout. Then she opened the journalistic equivalent of an outlet store, allowing reporters on two continents to root through everything the Journal had left behind in search of overlooked informational gems. Her intention was to broaden the circle, she said. She added that she plans to share the documents with academic writers and publications from parts of the world where she sees the greatest peril, including India and parts of the Middle East.

"The reason I wanted to do this project is because I think the global South is in danger," she said.

With this model, Haugen and her advisers have created a new kind of journalistic network, one that has stirred mixed feelings among the journalists involved. In the past two weeks, they have gathered on the messaging app Slack to coordinate their plans — and the name of their Slack group, chosen by Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of The Atlantic, suggests their ambivalence: "Apparently We’re a Consortium Now."

Inside the Slack group, whose messages were shared with me by a participant, members have reflected on the strangeness of working, however tangentially, with competitors. (I didn’t speak to any Times participants about the Slack messages.)

"This is the weirdest thing I have ever been part of, reporting-wise," wrote Alex Heath, a tech reporter for The Verge.

In an interview, Brian Carovillano, head of investigations for The Associated Press, said, "It’s remarkable to see these news organizations, large and small, set aside some of their competitive impulses and work together to report out a story that is unquestionably in the public interest."

The Slack group has also discussed news outlets that are not part of the consortium, including The Information. (In an article published Friday about Haugen’s media strategy, The Information reported that it had asked to join the group, "but was told by one participant that it was not accepting new members.") The Guardian, which won a Pulitzer Prize in public service in 2014 for its reports on secret surveillance by the National Security Agency — a series made possible by Snowden’s leaks — was another publication that got left out.

Haugen told the participants that she felt the Journal could have published more articles on the documents she provided, especially on Facebook’s effect on nations where English is not the main language.

The polished rollout, including Haugen’s Oct. 3 appearance on "60 Minutes" and congressional testimony days later, has led to dark hints from Facebook and its allies that there is something a little too good to be true about her. The Journal’s right-wing editorial page accused her of seeking to censor political speech, writing that it was "notable that her appearance seems to have been midwifed by Bill Burton, a prominent Democratic communications executive." A Facebook executive tweeted preemptively to suggest that the embargo could amount to an "orchestrated ‘gotcha’ campaign."

I haven’t found anything to suggest that there is more, or less, than meets the eye to Haugen, a high school debater who had worked at Google and Pinterest before joining Facebook in 2019.

"There is zero evidence whatsoever in my mind of any other entity being involved," Horwitz told me.

Lawrence Lessig, the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, who volunteered as her lawyer, said he had brought in Burton, the former Obama aide, in September, after the Journal’s reporting was underway.

Haugen, in our phone interview, also resolved a minor mystery: whether she’s quietly relying on the financial support of Pierre Omidyar, an eBay co-founder whose groups started working with her in October, as Politico first reported.

The reality, she said, is that she has her own financial resources, and has accepted help from nonprofit groups backed by Omidyar only for travel and similar expenses.

"For the foreseeable future, I’m fine, because I did buy crypto at the right time," she told me.

She noted that she had moved to Puerto Rico to cope with a health condition — but also to join her "crypto friends" on the island, whose capital-gains tax exemptions have made it a hub for that novel financial system.

(Burton said he was initially working without pay but is now being paid by donors, including the nonprofit groups backed by Omidyar.)

When I began reporting this column, I thought the central question would be whether Haugen’s tactics had allowed her to control the story, and whether journalistic collaboration had bled into groupthink. But although a glance at Twitter shows that journalists on any beat can slip into a herd mentality, there’s little evidence that this leak, with its trove of documentary detail, had deepened that tendency.

Competitive pressures have remained close to the surface. The Journal would have preferred other outlets stick with its "Facebook Files" branding, but the Times’ Mike Isaac wrote in the Slack group that using that phrase would be "free advertising for the Journal series," prompting Casey Newton of the newsletter Platformer to suggest going with "The Leftovers." Most outlets settled on "The Facebook Papers."

By Friday night — Black Friday at the information mall, so to speak — the Slack group was falling apart. Another Times reporter, Ryan Mac, had dropped in late that afternoon with a "heads-up": The Times would be publishing an article on Facebook’s conduct in the run-up to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol based — he assured his rivals — on "documents we got before the formation of the consortium."

It seemed to many others to be within the letter of their agreement, but also an attempt by the Times to get ahead of competitors who hadn’t obtained the documents separately.

"My thought is, if you are a reporter who had these docs, maybe it would have been cooler to not be part of the consortium, rather than run down the clock," NBC News' Brandy Zadrozny fumed in the Slack group.

After NBC News responded to the Times’ move by breaking the embargo with its own Facebook article, Zadrozny apologised to her rival reporters in a Slack message: "My editor says if the nytimes doesn’t have to abide by the rules then we are out. I’m really sorry. This sucks. And now it’s a media story."

A Times spokesperson, Danielle Rhoades Ha, said the publication is playing by the"consortium’s ground rules," under which "documents obtained by outlets prior to the consortium’s creation are not subject to the embargo time."

Haugen, for her part, has watched the Journal’s rollout and its rivals’ subsequent scramble to catch up with equanimity. "Now that I’ve met so many journalists, and I’ve seen how hard Jeff works, I feel more grateful for the media than when I started," she said.

Frances Haugen first met Jeff Horwitz, a tech-industry reporter for The Wall Street Journal, in early December on a hiking trail near the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California.

Frances Haugen first met Jeff Horwitz, a tech-industry reporter for The Wall Street Journal, in early December on a hiking trail near the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California. She liked that he seemed thoughtful, and she liked that he had written about Facebook’s role in transmitting violent Hindu nationalism in India, a particular interest of hers. She also got the impression that he would support her as a person, rather than as a mere source who could supply him with the inside information she had picked up during her nearly two years as a product manager at Facebook. "I auditioned Jeff for a while," Haugen told me in a phone interview from her home in Puerto Rico, "and one of the reasons I went with him is that he was less sensationalistic than other choices I could have made." She became one of the greatest sources of the century, turning over the tens of thousands of pages of internal documents she had collected. Starting Sept. 13, the Journal justified her confidence with a meticulous rollout that included 11 major articles by Horwitz and other reporters cleverly packaged under a catchy rubric, The Facebook Files. Key revelations included how Facebook executives handled politicised lies, including Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud. Often, the company chose to let misinformation spread widely, to keep more people logging on. The series also noted the lengths that Facebook went to in its desperation to hang on to its audience as young people drifted away from its platforms. The Journal also produced a podcast episode introducing Haugen as poised, incisive and intensely moral, a depiction that Horwitz told me he agrees with after much reporting, but which also amounted to white-glove treatment of a treasured source. So there was an uncomfortable moment Oct. 7, when a communications firm working with Haugen invited Horwitz and two of his editors to a Zoom call with a group that would grow to include journalists from 17 other U.S. media outlets. On the call, Haugen offered to share redacted versions of the trove of Facebook documents under an embargo to be set by the group. The firm, founded by former Barack Obama aide Bill Burton, would help manage the process. After she made her pitch, Horwitz and his colleagues found themselves in a strange position: The source who had provided them with the stuff of so many exclusive scoops now seemed to be going rogue. "This is a little awkward," Jason Dean, an editor at the Journal, said on the call, according to three participants. The Journal team left before the call was over. Since then, journalists at The Atlantic, The Associated Press, CNN, NBC News, Fox Business and other outlets, including The New York Times, have been poring over the first tranche of Haugen’s documents, along with a parallel group in Europe, with a plan to publish their findings Monday (although stories began trickling out Friday night). We live in a time of megaleaks, enabled by the same digital technology that allows us to surveil one another and document our lives as never before. These leaks have given the leakers and their brokers a new kind of power over the news media, raising tricky questions about how their revelations should enter the public sphere. There are questions, in particular, on the balance of power between the sources of vital information and the reporters who benefit from them. Some leaks, including U.S. military and State Department files, emerged on WikiLeaks or nameless servers in the form of massive data dumps; others, including Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency files and The Intercept’s revelations of America’s drone wars, came about after journalists had gained sources’ trusts. Reports on the Panama Papers, based on the leaking of more than 11 million documents, and other examinations of global tax evasion that followed it were brokered through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which managed a collaboration among hundreds of journalists around the world. They read the documents, as well as one another’s stories, on a secure server before coordinating the rollout of their articles on social media. In some cases, the leaker or hacker seems to be the one who controls how and when information is released. That’s how it went in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, when a Kremlin-directed cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee led to the devastatingly timed publication of the committee’s private documents on WikiLeaks. In other instances, a key source may yield to a unified group of journalists — at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists or elsewhere — who add layers of reporting and analysis to the raw material. "You can’t afford to have the source dictate the story," Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, said in an interview. Haugen chose a middle path, one that appears to have captured the best of both arrangements, from her perspective, while also foiling Facebook’s attempts to contain the story. First, she handed her documents to the Journal for a boutique rollout. Then she opened the journalistic equivalent of an outlet store, allowing reporters on two continents to root through everything the Journal had left behind in search of overlooked informational gems. Her intention was to broaden the circle, she said. She added that she plans to share the documents with academic writers and publications from parts of the world where she sees the greatest peril, including India and parts of the Middle East. "The reason I wanted to do this project is because I think the global South is in danger," she said. With this model, Haugen and her advisers have created a new kind of journalistic network, one that has stirred mixed feelings among the journalists involved. In the past two weeks, they have gathered on the messaging app Slack to coordinate their plans — and the name of their Slack group, chosen by Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of The Atlantic, suggests their ambivalence: "Apparently We’re a Consortium Now." Inside the Slack group, whose messages were shared with me by a participant, members have reflected on the strangeness of working, however tangentially, with competitors. (I didn’t speak to any Times participants about the Slack messages.) "This is the weirdest thing I have ever been part of, reporting-wise," wrote Alex Heath, a tech reporter for The Verge. In an interview, Brian Carovillano, head of investigations for The Associated Press, said, "It’s remarkable to see these news organizations, large and small, set aside some of their competitive impulses and work together to report out a story that is unquestionably in the public interest." The Slack group has also discussed news outlets that are not part of the consortium, including The Information. (In an article published Friday about Haugen’s media strategy, The Information reported that it had asked to join the group, "but was told by one participant that it was not accepting new members.") The Guardian, which won a Pulitzer Prize in public service in 2014 for its reports on secret surveillance by the National Security Agency — a series made possible by Snowden’s leaks — was another publication that got left out. Haugen told the participants that she felt the Journal could have published more articles on the documents she provided, especially on Facebook’s effect on nations where English is not the main language. The polished rollout, including Haugen’s Oct. 3 appearance on "60 Minutes" and congressional testimony days later, has led to dark hints from Facebook and its allies that there is something a little too good to be true about her. The Journal’s right-wing editorial page accused her of seeking to censor political speech, writing that it was "notable that her appearance seems to have been midwifed by Bill Burton, a prominent Democratic communications executive." A Facebook executive tweeted preemptively to suggest that the embargo could amount to an "orchestrated ‘gotcha’ campaign." I haven’t found anything to suggest that there is more, or less, than meets the eye to Haugen, a high school debater who had worked at Google and Pinterest before joining Facebook in 2019. "There is zero evidence whatsoever in my mind of any other entity being involved," Horwitz told me. Lawrence Lessig, the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, who volunteered as her lawyer, said he had brought in Burton, the former Obama aide, in September, after the Journal’s reporting was underway. Haugen, in our phone interview, also resolved a minor mystery: whether she’s quietly relying on the financial support of Pierre Omidyar, an eBay co-founder whose groups started working with her in October, as Politico first reported. The reality, she said, is that she has her own financial resources, and has accepted help from nonprofit groups backed by Omidyar only for travel and similar expenses. "For the foreseeable future, I’m fine, because I did buy crypto at the right time," she told me. She noted that she had moved to Puerto Rico to cope with a health condition — but also to join her "crypto friends" on the island, whose capital-gains tax exemptions have made it a hub for that novel financial system. (Burton said he was initially working without pay but is now being paid by donors, including the nonprofit groups backed by Omidyar.) When I began reporting this column, I thought the central question would be whether Haugen’s tactics had allowed her to control the story, and whether journalistic collaboration had bled into groupthink. But although a glance at Twitter shows that journalists on any beat can slip into a herd mentality, there’s little evidence that this leak, with its trove of documentary detail, had deepened that tendency. Competitive pressures have remained close to the surface. The Journal would have preferred other outlets stick with its "Facebook Files" branding, but the Times’ Mike Isaac wrote in the Slack group that using that phrase would be "free advertising for the Journal series," prompting Casey Newton of the newsletter Platformer to suggest going with "The Leftovers." Most outlets settled on "The Facebook Papers." By Friday night — Black Friday at the information mall, so to speak — the Slack group was falling apart. Another Times reporter, Ryan Mac, had dropped in late that afternoon with a "heads-up": The Times would be publishing an article on Facebook’s conduct in the run-up to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol based — he assured his rivals — on "documents we got before the formation of the consortium." It seemed to many others to be within the letter of their agreement, but also an attempt by the Times to get ahead of competitors who hadn’t obtained the documents separately. "My thought is, if you are a reporter who had these docs, maybe it would have been cooler to not be part of the consortium, rather than run down the clock," NBC News' Brandy Zadrozny fumed in the Slack group. After NBC News responded to the Times’ move by breaking the embargo with its own Facebook article, Zadrozny apologised to her rival reporters in a Slack message: "My editor says if the nytimes doesn’t have to abide by the rules then we are out. I’m really sorry. This sucks. And now it’s a media story." A Times spokesperson, Danielle Rhoades Ha, said the publication is playing by the"consortium’s ground rules," under which "documents obtained by outlets prior to the consortium’s creation are not subject to the embargo time." Haugen, for her part, has watched the Journal’s rollout and its rivals’ subsequent scramble to catch up with equanimity. "Now that I’ve met so many journalists, and I’ve seen how hard Jeff works, I feel more grateful for the media than when I started," she said.

Inside the big Facebook leak

When people enter Teeth, a bar in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood, the bouncer gives them options. They can order food and drinks at the bar, he says, or they can order via a QR code.

Each table at Teeth has a card emblazoned with the code, a pixelated black-and-white square. Customers simply scan it with their phone camera to open a website for the online menu. Then they can input their credit card information to pay, all without touching a paper menu or interacting with a server.

A scene like this was a rarity 18 months ago, but not anymore. “In 13 years of bar ownership in San Francisco, I’ve never seen a sea change like this that brought the majority of customers into a new behavior so quickly,” said Ben Bleiman, Teeth’s owner.

QR codes — essentially a kind of bar code that allows transactions to be touchless — have emerged as a permanent tech fixture from the coronavirus pandemic. Restaurants have adopted them en masse, retailers including CVS and Foot Locker have added them to checkout registers, and marketers have splashed them all over retail packaging, direct mail, billboards and TV advertisements.

But the spread of the codes has also let businesses integrate more tools for tracking, targeting and analytics, raising red flags for privacy experts. That’s because QR codes can store digital information such as when, where and how often a scan occurs. They can also open an app or a website that then tracks people’s personal information or requires them to input it.

As a result, QR codes have allowed some restaurants to build a database of their customers’ order histories and contact information. At retail chains, people may soon be confronted by personalized offers and incentives marketed within QR code payment systems.

“People don’t understand that when you use a QR code, it inserts the entire apparatus of online tracking between you and your meal,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Suddenly your offline activity of sitting down for a meal has become part of the online advertising empire.”

QR codes may be new to many American shoppers, but they have been popular internationally for years. Invented in 1994 to streamline car manufacturing at a Japanese company, QR codes became widely used in China in recent years after being integrated into the AliPay and WeChat Pay digital payment apps.

In the United States, the technology was hampered by clumsy marketing, a lack of consumer understanding and the hassle of needing a special app to scan the codes, said Scott Stratten, who wrote the 2013 business book “QR Codes Kill Kittens” with his wife, Alison Stratten.

That has changed for two reasons, Scott Stratten said. In 2017, he said, Apple made it possible for the cameras in iPhones to recognize QR codes, spreading the technology more widely. Then came the “pandemic, and it’s amazing what a pandemic can make us do,” he said.

Half of all full-service restaurant operators in the United States have added QR code menus since the start of the pandemic, according to the National Restaurant Association. In May 2020, PayPal introduced QR code payments and has since added them at CVS, Nike, Foot Locker and around 1 million small businesses. Square, another digital payments firm, rolled out a QR code ordering system for restaurants and retailers in September.

Cheqout and Mr. Yum, two startups that sell technology for creating QR code menus at restaurants, also said the codes had brought advantages to businesses.

Restaurants that use QR code menus can save 30% to 50% on labor costs by reducing or eliminating the need for servers to take orders and collect payments, said Tom Sharon, a co-founder of Cheqout.

Digital menus also make it easier to persuade people to spend more with offers to add fries or substitute more expensive spirits in a cocktail, with photographs of menu items to make them more appealing, said Kim Teo, a Mr. Yum co-founder. Orders placed through the QR code menu also let Mr. Yum inform restaurants what items are selling, so they can add a menu section with the most popular items or highlight dishes they want to sell.

These increased digital abilities are what worry privacy experts. Mr. Yum, for instance, uses cookies in the digital menu to track a customer’s purchase history and gives restaurants access to that information, tied to the customer’s phone number and credit cards. It is piloting software in Australia so restaurants can offer people a “recommended to you” section based on their previous orders, Teo said.

QR codes “are an important first step toward making your experience in physical space outside of your home feel just like being tracked by Google on your screen,” said Lucy Bernholz, director of Stanford University’s Digital Civil Society Lab.

Teo said that each restaurant’s customer data was available only to that establishment and that Mr. Yum did not use the information to reach out to customers. It also does not sell the data to any third-party brokers, she said.

Cheqout collects only customers’ names, phone numbers and protected payment information, which it does not sell to third parties, Sharon said.

On a recent blustery evening at Teeth, customers shared mixed reviews of the QR code ordering system from Cheqout, which the bar had installed in August. Some said it was convenient, but added that they would prefer a traditional menu at a fine dining establishment.

“If you’re on a date and you’re whipping your phone out, it’s a distraction,” Daniela Sernich, 29, said.

Jonathan Brooner-Contreras, 26, said that QR code ordering was convenient but that he feared the technology would put him out of his job as a bartender at a different bar in the neighborhood.

“It’s like if a factory replaced all of its workers with robots,” he said. “People depend on those 40 hours.”

Regardless of customers’ feelings, Bleiman said Cheqout’s data showed that about half of Teeth’s orders — and as much as 65% during televised sports games — were coming through the QR code system.

“They may not like it,” he said in a text message. “But they’re doing it!”

When people enter Teeth, a bar in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood, the bouncer gives them options. They can order food and drinks at the bar, he says, or they can order via a QR code.

When people enter Teeth, a bar in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood, the bouncer gives them options. They can order food and drinks at the bar, he says, or they can order via a QR code. Each table at Teeth has a card emblazoned with the code, a pixelated black-and-white square. Customers simply scan it with their phone camera to open a website for the online menu. Then they can input their credit card information to pay, all without touching a paper menu or interacting with a server. A scene like this was a rarity 18 months ago, but not anymore. “In 13 years of bar ownership in San Francisco, I’ve never seen a sea change like this that brought the majority of customers into a new behavior so quickly,” said Ben Bleiman, Teeth’s owner. QR codes — essentially a kind of bar code that allows transactions to be touchless — have emerged as a permanent tech fixture from the coronavirus pandemic. Restaurants have adopted them en masse, retailers including CVS and Foot Locker have added them to checkout registers, and marketers have splashed them all over retail packaging, direct mail, billboards and TV advertisements. But the spread of the codes has also let businesses integrate more tools for tracking, targeting and analytics, raising red flags for privacy experts. That’s because QR codes can store digital information such as when, where and how often a scan occurs. They can also open an app or a website that then tracks people’s personal information or requires them to input it. As a result, QR codes have allowed some restaurants to build a database of their customers’ order histories and contact information. At retail chains, people may soon be confronted by personalized offers and incentives marketed within QR code payment systems. “People don’t understand that when you use a QR code, it inserts the entire apparatus of online tracking between you and your meal,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Suddenly your offline activity of sitting down for a meal has become part of the online advertising empire.” QR codes may be new to many American shoppers, but they have been popular internationally for years. Invented in 1994 to streamline car manufacturing at a Japanese company, QR codes became widely used in China in recent years after being integrated into the AliPay and WeChat Pay digital payment apps. In the United States, the technology was hampered by clumsy marketing, a lack of consumer understanding and the hassle of needing a special app to scan the codes, said Scott Stratten, who wrote the 2013 business book “QR Codes Kill Kittens” with his wife, Alison Stratten. That has changed for two reasons, Scott Stratten said. In 2017, he said, Apple made it possible for the cameras in iPhones to recognize QR codes, spreading the technology more widely. Then came the “pandemic, and it’s amazing what a pandemic can make us do,” he said. Half of all full-service restaurant operators in the United States have added QR code menus since the start of the pandemic, according to the National Restaurant Association. In May 2020, PayPal introduced QR code payments and has since added them at CVS, Nike, Foot Locker and around 1 million small businesses. Square, another digital payments firm, rolled out a QR code ordering system for restaurants and retailers in September. Cheqout and Mr. Yum, two startups that sell technology for creating QR code menus at restaurants, also said the codes had brought advantages to businesses. Restaurants that use QR code menus can save 30% to 50% on labor costs by reducing or eliminating the need for servers to take orders and collect payments, said Tom Sharon, a co-founder of Cheqout. Digital menus also make it easier to persuade people to spend more with offers to add fries or substitute more expensive spirits in a cocktail, with photographs of menu items to make them more appealing, said Kim Teo, a Mr. Yum co-founder. Orders placed through the QR code menu also let Mr. Yum inform restaurants what items are selling, so they can add a menu section with the most popular items or highlight dishes they want to sell. These increased digital abilities are what worry privacy experts. Mr. Yum, for instance, uses cookies in the digital menu to track a customer’s purchase history and gives restaurants access to that information, tied to the customer’s phone number and credit cards. It is piloting software in Australia so restaurants can offer people a “recommended to you” section based on their previous orders, Teo said. QR codes “are an important first step toward making your experience in physical space outside of your home feel just like being tracked by Google on your screen,” said Lucy Bernholz, director of Stanford University’s Digital Civil Society Lab. Teo said that each restaurant’s customer data was available only to that establishment and that Mr. Yum did not use the information to reach out to customers. It also does not sell the data to any third-party brokers, she said. Cheqout collects only customers’ names, phone numbers and protected payment information, which it does not sell to third parties, Sharon said. On a recent blustery evening at Teeth, customers shared mixed reviews of the QR code ordering system from Cheqout, which the bar had installed in August. Some said it was convenient, but added that they would prefer a traditional menu at a fine dining establishment. “If you’re on a date and you’re whipping your phone out, it’s a distraction,” Daniela Sernich, 29, said. Jonathan Brooner-Contreras, 26, said that QR code ordering was convenient but that he feared the technology would put him out of his job as a bartender at a different bar in the neighborhood. “It’s like if a factory replaced all of its workers with robots,” he said. “People depend on those 40 hours.” Regardless of customers’ feelings, Bleiman said Cheqout’s data showed that about half of Teeth’s orders — and as much as 65% during televised sports games — were coming through the QR code system. “They may not like it,” he said in a text message. “But they’re doing it!”

QR codes are here to stay. So is the tracking they allow.

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QR codes are here to stay. So is the tracking they allow.

Google illegally storing user 'data': Tracks users activity in apps