Track QR Code Scans in GA4 Without Losing Attribution

You launch a print campaign. Posters go up, menus get new QR codes, product packaging ships with a fresh scan prompt. Two weeks later you open GA4 to measure performance and see a spike in direct traffic. No campaign, no source, no medium. Your QR scans are in there somewhere, mixed in with people who typed your URL by hand. This is the default behavior for QR code GA4 tracking, and it will keep breaking attribution on every physical campaign you run until you fix it. TL;DR QR scans arrive in GA