Spam and Bluetooth

Filed in archive Spam News on October 20, 2007

Spammers continue to find new and increasingly annoying ways to get their ads to us. First there was ordinary old email spam, then instant message spam, chat room spam bots, text message spam, and now they appear to be setting their sites on Bluetooth.

If you have a Bluetooth enabled phone or device, you're probably familiar with Bluejacking. For those who aren't, Bluejacking is the sending of unsolicited messages via Bluetooth to other Bluetooth enabled devices. While harmless from a technical standpoint, it can be upsetting to the receiver who often thinks his device is malfunctioning, and recent months there have been reports of violent images and videos being sent to people via Bluejacking. Now Bluetooth users are being subjected to another abuse of the technology-BlueSpam. That is, the sending of spam via Bluetooth. For example, a Bluetooth user walking past a particular store may suddenly receive a message hawking a sale at that store. It's not clear yet if the U.S. will treat Bluetooth spam in the same way as ordinary spam, but legislators in the U.K. have removed Bluetooth from its list of communication devices that require opt in permission for advertisers, seemingly clearing the way for Bluespammers there.

Want to protect yourself from Bluespam? Here are some simple steps to take:

1. Turn off Bluetooth if you're not using it!
2. Turn off the Visibility feature if you don't need other Bluetooth devices to automatically "see" yours.
3. Make sure your device's "ask before saving a received file" feature (if it has one) is turned on.

For more information on Bluespamming here is an interesting FAQ page written by someone who writes Bluespam programs but yet seems to want to help people avoid it!