Bluetooth - another media panic.
Rating: ooh my there goes N95 with his bluetooth switched on.
This is a nothing story over on New Scientist (surely that’s a trade description when talking abut Bluetooth :-)) but it makes me so mad to see this mind of mis-information spread about that I had to write a riposte.. please indulge me.
So, “Vassilis Kostakos at the University of Bath in the UK placed four Bluetooth receivers in the city’s centre. Over four months, his team tracked 10,000 Bluetooth phones and was able to “capture and analyse people’s encounters” in pubs, streets and shops” says The New Scientist.
Right ok, what that translates down too is that some people called Nokia, Flirt, tart, hard man, Mickey Mouse, N95 and other unidentifiable name tags had their Bluetooth ID picked up in four different locations.
When all you get is a Bluetooth ID and a tag (name) does this really mean that as New Scientist say “Bluetooth gives spies a window into your life”. Mr Kostakos says Bluetooth is now more of a privacy threat than the more frequently publicised RFID chips, Kostakos says.
“If people are worried, they should turn off the Bluetooth function on their mobile phones.”..er right yeah. The reality is folks that you would have to be pretty sad to install a number of Bluetooth scanners around a town centre just in case you see somebody called shag me now!
Yes, you could see at what time someone was within 10 metres or 100 metres (if your really high tech) of a node but you can do more with cell technology any second of every hour..
just for example use any of the find me my nearest blah…
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