Worried about your civil liberties and privacy? Then it may come as a shock to discover that you have unwittingly been allowing your phone to signal your every move.
Bluetooth, a wireless link built into many cellphones, makes our movements trackable by anyone equipped with a PC and an appropriate receiver. 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.
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."
- From issue 2654 of New Scientist magazine, page 23. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
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Have your say
Smart Phones
Wed May 07 11:05:24 BST 2008 by Glynn Quelch (uk)
I have a HTC Pocket PC Phone and mch to my shock i turned bluetooth on to send a friend a few files on his standard mobile. While the files where being sent he loged into my phone and took controll of it. With no extra software. He could launch aplications and generally have full control via his handset. Needless to say that was the last time i used the battery draining bluetooth feature. I`ll stick with IR, USB and Wifi from now on.
The only plus side is its annoyed me so much and he had so much fun watching me battle with him to stop him accidently deleting something of importance. He never got the files either.
Im not a fan of transmitting anything via wireless of any description. But then agan i love wires you can see where its going and maked fault finding a little more straight forward.
4 Sensors
Wed May 07 11:33:50 BST 2008 by Steve
So when they say "pubs, streets and shops" they presumably mean 4 specific locations, and the only information they could glean from most devices would be the transmitted device name...
So they 'tracked' a whole bunch of people called Nokia, and 8810 and Steve and Fart and whatever other monikers people chose. And by tracked they mean they saw them appear within a few metres, 10 at the most, of their sensor, and then they disappeared again.
4 Sensors
Wed May 07 12:38:01 BST 2008 by David Maurice
Heard of counter-intelligence?
Given that person A follows the same path, and is in proximity to person B on a fairly regular schedule, and person A is a person of interest, it would sufiice that person B would be someone to look out for as well - without the need to put human assets on monitoring person A.
4 Sensors
Wed May 07 13:36:04 BST 2008 by Anonymous
Counter as in "opposed" to intelligence? :P
Great, so we now that NokiaN70 is collusion with SE660 on Friday evenings down the pub. So why should any regular person care?
4 Sensors
Thu May 08 10:46:46 BST 2008 by Steve
Given that person A is only identified as NokiaN70 (as the previous poster said) and that all you know is that he happened to be within 2 metres of your sensor at the same time as a dozen other people, what intelligence have you gained?
None. You don't know which of the 40 people within range had that particular phone, you don't have a unique identifier for that phone or person and thus you can't 'track' them at all.
4 Sensors
Wed May 07 16:12:55 BST 2008 by Stuart
Bluetooth devices all have a unique id assides from the the name you set, software can pick that up.
Bluetooth
Wed May 07 14:19:45 BST 2008 by Steven
Why when everyone seems to want to know everything about you, would u leave bluetooth on all the time ? ? ?
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