Rodney

I read this in todays NYTimes. Ill copy the text and give a link.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/te...=all&position=


here's the text....

When a Stranger Calls, From Afar or Nearby
By RACHEL DODES

Published: March 24, 2005


LL quarter, Alan Kwan stalked his prey. Mr. Kwan, a senior at the University of California, Santa Barbara, discovered that he could send short-range text messages to classmates during lectures using the Bluetooth networking system on his cellphone, a Nokia 6230.

He zeroed in on one phone whose Bluetooth-equipped presence he had detected in several of his classes (while scanning the room with his phone "to relieve boredom"). He had no idea whose it was until he heard a beep from a classmate's Sony Ericsson T610 - and saw him looking at the display.

The messages then became more pointed. "So, you skipped P. Chem this morning, huh?" one said.

The puzzled classmate had fallen victim to Bluejacking - the act of sending random strangers unsolicited messages using Bluetooth, the radio-based technology standard in many cellphones and palmtops that enables people to swap digital business cards and photographs.

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Finally, the recipient had had enough, and responded with a message of his own: "Who R U?"

For his part, Mr. Kwan is not revealing his identity. (Mutual friends told him that the other phone owner thinks Mr. Kwan is a woman trying to flirt with him.) "My personal holiday is April Fool's Day," said Mr. Kwan, a biochemistry major. "I have always been a big fan of pulling pranks on people."

Bluetooth technology was initially developed as a way to create short-range cordless connections between devices, like a headset and a phone, or a printer and a computer. It grew to encompass the exchange of business cards and photos between mobile devices over distances of 30 feet or less. Now it has become a tool for meeting strangers in your midst - flirting, playing pranks, finding a kindred spirit.

"In my view, this is the mark of a good technology, when people take it and expand it further than you initially envisioned when you were designing it," said Michael Foley, executive director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, an industry trade group based in Overland Park, Kan.

To send a message over Bluetooth, one must improvise. Users create a digital business card file that can be sent from phone to phone, enabling them to enter a short message in the various fields. For example, in the name field you might identify yourself as SittingNearU or Hello Stranger. (Mr. Kwan calls his phone WildTime.)

There is no way for a recipient to trace the source of a Bluetooth message because it does not travel over a wireless service provider's network, and therefore is not tagged with a phone number. (It is also consequently free.) On the other end, there is no easy way for a Bluejacker to be sure of sending a message to the person for whom it is intended.

Adrian Gonzalez, a 22-year-old from Arbuckle, Calif., learned this the hard way when he tried to send a flirtatious message to a phone nicknamed Cutesy by its owner: Mr. Gonzalez thought the phone belonged to a woman sitting nearby, but it turned out that Cutesy was a man.

Bluejacking started in Europe, in high-density areas like the London Underground. That is probably because Bluetooth-enabled phones are far more common there than in the United States. According to the Gartner Group, a research firm, 39 percent of phones sold in Europe last year were equipped with Bluetooth technology, compared with only 4 percent here.

But Bluejacking is gaining some notice here and generating buzz on the Internet: Web sites dedicated to the activity, like bluejackq.com and bluejackaddicts.com, have cropped up, providing forums where Bluetooth enthusiasts can exchange tips and share anecdotes.

There is even a Web site, www.bluetoothusersagainstbush.com, that exhorts people to name their phones "Bluetooth Against Bush" and set them in discoverable mode. (This particular brand of political networking has been labeled Blueroots activism.) In Britain, in addition to flirting, some have used the technology to procure anonymous sex partners.

Crowded London pubs are popular locales for Bluejacking. Gilly Stewart, a teacher in London, was out with friends at a bar on a recent Saturday night when they decided to take a saucy cleavage-bearing photo of themselves from the necks down using Ms. Stewart's Nokia 7610 camera phone. After she snapped the photo, she used Bluetooth to detect who else was around. They noticed on Ms. Stewart's screen that there was someone in their vicinity who had named his or her phone BigSloppyDonkey.

"We thought we had to send the picture to BigSloppyDonkey," Ms. Stewart said. "It was really just to amuse ourselves." A few seconds later Ms. Stewart and her friends saw a group of guys passing around a cellphone and looking around, ostensibly to figure out which faces in the bar belonged to the bodies in the photo. The women couldn't contain their laughter.

In the United States, it is harder to Bluejack than it is in Europe, owing largely to the paucity of potential targets. But that should change as more phones arrive with Bluetooth features. The price of Bluetooth phone chips has come down to about $2 per unit today from about $5 per unit in 2003, according to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. Because of the low cost of production, Gartner Group estimates that by 2008, 60 percent of new phones in the United States will contain Bluetooth, compared with 90 percent in Europe.

The one potential drawback of communicating by Bluetooth is that messages can be received only if a phone is set in "discoverable" mode, which means that other Bluetooth-enabled phones within a 30-foot radius can sense the device's presence. Some experts caution that leaving your phone discoverable will leave you vulnerable to phone viruses.

In June 2004, a virus called Cabir was released by a hacker group called 29A Labs. This was the first virus that propagated by Bluetooth, hopping to phones that used the Symbian 60 operating system. The Cabir virus was not very dangerous - it has been found in no more than 20 phones and has caused no damage - but it showed how hackers might find ways to sabotage mobile phones in the future.

Adam Laurie, managing director and chief security officer of the British technology firm A. L. Digital, recommended in an October 2004 paper that Bluetooth users "just say no" to unsolicited messages from Bluejackers. And the Bluetooth Special Interest Group released a statement on security recently recommending that users "pair their Bluetooth devices in private, use the nondiscoverable mode of their device when in crowded areas, never accept unknown contacts, and download antivirus software for mobile devices as it becomes available."

(For his part, Mr. Foley of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group says he always leaves his phone in discoverable mode. "This is really an ease-of-use issue versus ultimate security decision," he said. "With the vast majority of devices, when discoverable, the only potential problem is nuisance-type issues like getting a random business card.") It is important to note that Bluejacking does not, in fact, involve stealing data from other people's phones or transmitting viruses. It is basically just a new way of prank calling people, with a twist: you can actually see your victims reacting to the odd messages.

Being Bluejacked can be somewhat eerie, especially if a prankster chooses to send a message like "Your cellphone has been hijacked," an old standby for Ethan Sobin, a 20-year-old college student in Plano, Tex. "I get a little evil," he said. "It's funny to see people freak out."

Bluejackers are not the only ones trying to unleash Bluetooth's potential as a matchmaking technology; so are researchers and businesses.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Media Lab's Serendipity project is using Bluetooth-enabled phones to map social connections between graduate students and business school students. Researchers led by Nathan Eagle, a doctoral student, created profiles of the project's 100 participants, stating their hobbies and research interests, so when two like-minded students come in contact with each other, the software on the phones facilitates an introduction.

"We are talking about M.I.T. students here, so it's more 'Let's, like, write a business plan,' than, 'Let's hook up,' " Mr. Eagle said.

This summer, Mr. Eagle and his business partner, Vivek Sharma, will introduce Sense Six, a Bluetooth-based matchmaking service in London. The service, which will be free to all users (revenue will come from advertising), will allow people to rate on 5-point scale what they are looking for in a partner. When two compatible people come in range of each other, their phones will ask them if they want to be introduced. If both parties agree, the two profiles will be exchanged.

In a similar vein, a company called BEDD - the letters don't stand for anything - will introduce a Bluetooth-based matchmaking product in New York this fall, after its introduction in Asia last summer. When a subscriber comes into contact with a putative match, both phones start ringing.

Stephen Carlton, chief executive of BEDD, which is based in Singapore, says he is equipping the software with virus protection to encourage customers to keep their phones in discoverable mode.

"I think the world is more and more receptive to the idea of meeting strangers," Mr. Carlton said. "It just takes time. In the beginning, people thought meeting people on the Internet was weird."

JPSMAN

thanks!