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Bluetooth Ads Beamed from Billboards
dylanduck writes "Billboards in the UK have been using Bluetooth to beam media clips at passing cellular phones. The system has been dubbed Bluecasting and 17,000 people accepted the ads. When billboards know your name that's when to really worry."
Hope someone hacks it and starts bluecasting goatse in its place.
I hope high gas prices are depriving your children, you fucking dumbass.
Watch out, when someone figures out how to hack your bluetooth automatically, grab all your personal information and talor its advertisements accordingly, thats when I'm going to be afraid.
As if there weren't enough distracted drivers on the road. Now if people aren't yapping on their cell phones they'll be reading the myriad advertisements being beamed to them.
My name is double ROT13 encrypted. They can't use my name without violating the DMCA.
This reminds me of Minority Report where the billboards were scanning peoples eyes and addressing them by name. Is this a case of life imitating art?
It would seem a lot more useful if they beamed you coupons or discounts that you could use for say the next 24 or 48 hours. Of course, that would also involve setting up the infrastructure for redeeming those coupons...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
They could just beam the tickets out from the billboards. "If you are reading this message, you are under arrest".
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
great..
now we will have bluetooth spam everywhere we go..
just what we need..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Otherwise, it's like a pop-up on your phone, asking if you'd like to see a pop-up ad.
"from the bricks to the booth...I predict the future like Cleo the psychic..."
I've beeing seeing lots of ads for products that whiten teeth lately, but but who in their right mind would want...oh wait, nevermind.
However they have had interactive billboards on the Tube for some time.
They concerned the use of unlicensed faux-minicabs to lure women into situations where they are abducted and often sexually abused.
The billboards allowed you to align your phone's IR receiver with a flashing icon to receive information on how to better protect yourself if you happen to be a woman.
I daresay Bluetooth seems rather more invasive as a means of delivering content - particularly commercial advertising rather than citizen's advice.
Most people don't get too many bluetooth messages on their devices so when something like this happens they say "okay" to accept and see what the ad is all about. After a while people will get sick of it though, and fewer and fewer will accept them.
So this is good advertising.... for now... =)
This is exactly the same idea as email spam, sending off an advertisement to as many people as you can whether they asked for it or not. Forcing the user to have to click 'no' to get rid of it. We shouldn't have to cripple technology (IE turn off features on the phone) just to avoid being bombarded with a commercial for Dominoes Pizza. At least with a normal billboard if I don't want to see the message I can look somewhere else. I wish I lived there with a mobile phone just to be the first one to file a lawsuit against the companies sending out these ads.
LeoPolus Web Design: http://www.leopolus.com
Let's send the signal thru giant antennas and it will be encoded with electromagnetic waves, using Amplitude and Frequency Modulation. The devices are so simple they don't require digital technology.
With this, you can even choose with an analog dial, which emitters (let's call them "stations") to listen to the advertisers! Furthermore, why stop with advertising? Let's add content, like news or music, too!
Forget about podcasting, bluecasting. The future is "wavecasting"! It'll rock!
*Rushes to the patent office*
I was walking central London today when I got a message saying my mobile's bluetooth had an incoming message and asked if I wanted to accept it. Thinking I had finally found another toother, I quickly accepted thinking I was about to engage in depraved anonymous sex. Alas, 449 days of toothing in London and still no takers. Pretty soon I'm going to just assume bluetooth is a crap technology and just switch to raising the collars on my green polos.
http://www.mample.net
We are having enough with Email spams. Now they want you get Cell phone Spams. Really, when this gets worse, people will stop using technology altogether.
Oh, I don't know. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came. You want to be where you can see our troubles are all the same. You want to be where everybody knows your name.
Cheers,
Ian
Nope, it hasn't been dubbed BlueCasting, except by marketing twits in Italian suits and advertising twerps in Emo glasses.
The real world calls it SPAM. If you have to get trendy, BlueSpamming. Or if you want to get really wild, based on IM SPAM = SPIM, you get BLUE SPAM = SPLUE.
We let them use Hacker for Cracker, and we let them take Digital Rights Management for Digital Restriction Mechanisms. We control the names, folks, not them. A dog does not lay bioreclaimable fertilizer on the path, it shits on the sidewalk. "BlueCasting" sounds like a neat 21st century hip thing. "Spam" is a nasty annoyance that Russians get beat to death for. Give it the correct name.
We are having enough with Email spams. Now they want you get Cell phone Spams. Really, when this gets worse, people will stop using technology altogether.
Exactly. Low tech is the wave of the future.
In the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle, one of the most wired and tech neighborhoods, many of us no longer wear watches or carry cell phones, because they're a nuisance. We let loose the electronic leashes and savor the joy of life.
And then we go home and use our wireless laptops and high-speed cable/DSL/internet2 connections to surf the Net, or drop by a free wireless fair trade organic coffeeshop.
You can either be a slave of the Man, or you can opt out of the Man's rules.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yes, of course. This is why we develop more advanced technologies, such as radio, the television, the internet, and bluetooth. We just want more ads! Thanks a lot.
I wonder if, for some people, disabling their phone/device from being discovered via bluetooth will be a viable option? Maybe they need that enabled for something? Too bad there isn't a "DO NOT RECEIVE ADVERTISEMENTS" setting.
Thank God, bluetooth can be disabled.
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So I wonder if these ads cost you money each time you drive past one of the billboards
Last I heard, there's no charge for bluetooth datatransfer. Bluetooth is like wifi, not like SMS.
So tell me, why would I ever want to own a phone with Bluetooth if they're doing this? They still make non-bluetooth phones and wired headsets? Right?
(I pick up 75 wireless access points on my 12 mile commute through what I thought was the countryside - so I can't imagine what this "bluecasting" will be like once it takes off in cities).
I can almost see the next step being advertisers pressuring phone makers to require always-on phones with always-on bluetooth so that they can't be "denied" the chance to spam your phone. You won't be able to switch the phone off, will only ever be able to switch to "silent mode" for a couple of hours at a time (like for going to a movie theater), and it'll automatically accept absolutely anything sent to it (and it'll simply keep the last 128MB [or however much storage the device has] of messages received). Just walking through the mall your phone will pick up 40 different advertising messages before you get to the store you wanted to go to - and when out driving, billboards and other cars will all repeatedly spam you.
And worst of all, they'll advertise this as being a "feature" of the phone ("get always-on bluecast so you're not left out! all the cool kids have it.. and you want to be cool.. don't you?") - and people will still buy it.
Couldn't get why only Billboards will send these bluetooth messages? It can be anything - a tree, a transport truck, a building, a shop - they are all going to torture you with these advertisements till you disable bluetooth or upgrade to "premium" service offered by well, your friendly wireless carrier!
Explore your creative side
So, if accessing an available Wifi access point is illegal, per the recent cases in Florida and the UK, wouldn't accessing my phone also be illegal access of a computer (since a mobile phone is technically a computer these days), and wouldn't someone be able to sue these BlueSpammers for unauthorized access?
FTA - "The posters detected 87,000 Bluetooth phones over a two week period, of which about 17% were willing to download the clip, says Scott."
First 17% is more like 14,790. I couldn't find a reference to the 17,000 number. (Perhaps its somewhere on the corporate web site link.) But even ignoring this point I'd still question the "willing" statement. Does that mean people intentionlly enabled access to their cell phones. Or is it more like 17% of blue tooth cell phonesare left unsecured by their owners?
Sort of like claiming 40% of PCs are "willing" to be zombies for spam.
I will not read Bluetooth Spam
I will not read it, Sam I am.
I will not read it in the tube,
I will not read it even if it shows me a boob
I will not read it in my car
I will not read it in a bar
I do not like Bluetooth spam
I do not like it, Sam I am.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I've still got mine discoverable.
Cabbage.
Nah, just curious. The first time they do this, 17,000 people will accept the "blue-vert". Of those 17,000, the next time, only 7,000 people will accept. The third time, 700.
Eventually the new technology will penetrate the common consciousness and people will just start ignoring it, since it is, after all, thoroughly useless and annoying. The only thing it has going for it is its novelty. Once that's dried up, "blue-vertising" will go away and die.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
In the rest of the civilized world, receiving an SMS costs you nothing either. It amazes me that that US operators can get away with squeezing the customer for money to receive unsolicited SMS messages.
I wonder if a virus could be passed this way and if it could then you could have infected at least 17,000 people via blue tooth.
SPUE is a better contraction for SPAM and Bluetooth...
Now go ehway or I shall tauntu a second timeh!
Honestly.
Is it possible to go anywhere or do anything these days without being advertised at? Seems you just can't get away from it anymore.
In any case, if I'm standing on a train platform looking at a billboard, I can just read the damn billboard. What is the point of sending me a message to tell me about what's on the billboard?
You must be new hear. Hmm, how about slashdot bluecasting TFA to someone as soon as they click on the summary, thus forcing everyone to RTFA before they post stupid comments?
BUT...someone slap the marketing flunky who came up with "podcasting" because the content is actually pulled by clients (like RSS).
okay, we'll just call it podpulling from now on then..
(may read 'IMHO' wherever omitted from above text)
> Of course, how many /.'ers actually leave BT enabled on their phones/PDAs?
Me, for one. I've even got it broadcasting my name, so if someone around me finds it, they know who it belongs to.
I don't mind people saying "hi", in a matter of speaking. So far, it's been coworkers etc. who decide to send me files. When I start getting ads/spam on it, I will shut it off.
find an old pda and have it 'bluecast' porn.
Sit it next to a real coke bluecaster, and then half the time that people choose to "Accept connection from Coke?" they'll get the porn.
Bluetooth doesn't have a whole lot of authentication other than the name that the other node chooses.
It wont take many calls to a large companies complaint department about them dispatching porn before this whole dumb idea will go away.
You do realize that billboards are NOT only on highways but on city streets, right? Where pedestrians see them.
The big 2 cell phone providers are Rogers and Bell (there's others but they're a lot smaller). Neither of them have a cellphone that has bluetooth yet. BTW the Treo 650 and Blackberry devices do have bluetooth but they're just glorified PDAs with cell phone capability that costs an arm and a leg.
I could buy a phone from the US and get it hacked, but why should I lose a warranty and pay a couple hundred dollars when I should be able to get one for FREE or close to it ($99 at most).
How long has bluetooth been an option on cell phones in the US and Europe and yet I still can't get one here.
All I want it is so that I can receive calls on my BT headset and use Sailling Clicker to control my iBook.
To make matters worse
Futureshop (owned by BestBuy), advertised a BT headset right beside the non-BT cell phones instead of in the computer section of the weekly flier.
After that one I thought you'd be here all week.
Actually like Ethernet cards and the like, Bluetooth Adapters too have an unqiue 48bit MAC which can be used to trace people. I don't really know a hell of
a lot about Bluetooth and its protocols but I can
imagine that a device that sends a connection request might get a reply back of the like "I got your request to connect to application X, now hold on while I signal the user and ask her if it is okay". In this case the advertiser gets the MAC even though the user does not authorize the connectino.
I love the "Furthermore, there is no risk of downloading viruses or other malware to the phone, says O'Regan: "We don't send applications or executable code.""
Riiiight.
I find the whole notion of this distasteful. Billboards are bad enough. This is adding spam to them. I don't use Bluetooth now (see no real benefit from it really) and if enabling Bluetooth is going to subject me to spam, no thanks . . .
But, considering in 2000 the hot marketing gimmick was to mount Palm Pilot's around metropolitan areas (at least Manhattan had them) and have people point their Palm at it to sync up an ad . . . and that lasted like a month . . .
Not only that, the "pod" part is pretty inaccurate, since the iPod itself has nothing to do with the technology, it's just a way to play the downloaded audio.
Q: Is nothing sacred anymore?
A: No
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The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. - William McDonough
Mod parent funny! Lovely reference. I was thinking the very same thing.
people seem to think that cell phones MUST be answered, and ALWAYS pick up.
Nah! That's what voice mail is for. Actually among my friends SMS is by far the preferred way of communicating. Not actually speaking to one another. In fact, in order of use, phones are probably used for...
- SMS/Test messages
- Photos
- Providing data connections
- Voice calls.
If work wants to contact me they can buy me a blackberry. They haven't so far and I wont give them my private number.
This reminds me about all of the buzz about targeting peoples cellphones that had GPS turned on. "Turn left here for great eat's at Identity Theft Cafe"
Fortunately, that has seemed to fade away. UNfortunately, Bluetooth ads are much easier, unless it comes to the US and they want to target Verizon customers, since Verizon sells "Bluetooth" phones with their balls chopped off.
Imagine being somewhere like a casino (where you can bet they already or will soon will use face recognition on everyone). Cameras could be positioned in certain places to automatically recognise a person and change all the machines and signs within the proximity to be more appealing.
Hell, I bet a system could pitch different ads depending on whether a man, women, or kids were walking past based on their smell. For extra sophistication it could even detect BO & perfume as giveaways of the person's wealth and status.