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Spammed by Bluetooth

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the begin-the-torture dept.

An Anonymous Reader writes "BBC News is reporting a new craze - using Bluetooth to send unsolicited messages. Apparently lots of phone owners are leaving Bluetooth switched on, meaning that anyone within range can send a short message. The phenomenon is known as "bluejacking". It's not clear at present that this is being done by anyone other than pranksters, but one can't help wondering, how long before commercial spammers catch on."

5 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, I've done this. by Nugget · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Heh. I had a long layover in Amsterdam last month and had hours of gleeful fun sending "boe" notes over bluetooth to all the other bluetooth phones I could see while drinking Heineken at the KLM Crown Lounge.

    I've used this feature also to send quick notes to cow-orkers at the office when they were on the phone or we were busy in a meeting. It's handy and saves the absurd ten cent charge applied to an outbound SMS.

    It's only a matter of time before it's rendered useless due to spam, I'm sure.

  2. How does this work? by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Every bluetooth phone I've ever owned has required a PIN to be set when you activate it. Without the PIN you can't make a connection.

    Then, when connection does succeed, a box pops up on the receiving phone asking whether you want to accept the connection.

    It's difficult to see how that could be done without the owner knowing about it.

    1. Re:How does this work? by mtg101 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In normal operation, say between a PC and phone, you do need to 'pair' devices using a PIN. However for certain operations - like sending a vCard phone2phone, phones will allow connections to be made and messages to be sent without authorisation.

      This allows a vCard (which may just be a message in the 'name' field) to be sent without authentication, or the target having to confirm receipt.

      Worse than vCards, you can send pics this way. It may be funny to take a pic of someone with your phone and then 'bluejack' it too them - but I know people who've received some pretty nasty porn over bluejacking too.

  3. Bluetooth directional antennas. by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As bluetooth operates in the same 2.4 GHz band as WiFi, I'd bet some people are hooking up Bluetooth devices to cantennas for greater bluejacking range.

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
  4. Could you imagine bluejacking bombs? by Refried+Beans · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You could easily create a small battery powered embedded device running Linux that would just send out bluetooth messages. Drop that on a city bus or subway car and you could spam a ton of people really easily.

    Perhaps I should be patenting an idea like that. ;)