bluejacking

Have you ever been the victim of a bluejacking?

It is important to note that Bluejacking does not, in fact, involve stealing data from other people's phones or transmitting viruses.

Bluejacking has been used in guerrilla marketing campaigns to promote advergames.

It is important not to confuse Bluesnarfing with Bluejacking.

This can be confusing as, for example, there could be several phones in range named T610 (see Bluejacking).

Defining "Bluejacking"

The term "Bluejacking" has been coined to refer to people who send irrelevant, surprising, or shocking messages to strangers in their vicinity.

Bluejacking is the sending of a text message to other nearby Bluetooth users who then add the sender to their address books as a contact.

Bluejacking is usually harmless, but because bluejacked people generally don't know what has happened, they may think that their phone is malfunctioning.

Bluesnarfing is much more serious than Bluejacking, but both exploit others' Bluetooth connections without their knowledge.

Bluejacking is the sending of either a picture or a message from one user to an unsuspecting user through Bluetooth wireless technology.

BlueJackQ is a website dedicated to Bluejacking.

For more technically inclined pranksters with access to Bluetooth technology, however, there's the digital version of doorbell ditching and prank phone calls: Bluejacking.

Bluejacking is also confused with Bluesnarfing which is the way in which mobile phones are illegally hacked via Bluetooth.

STEVE: Oh, well, we've got BlueJacking, BlueBugging, BlueSnarfing, BlueDiving.

While Bluejacking is essentially harmless as it only transmits data to the target device (rather than retrieving data), Bluesnarfing is the theft of information from the target device.

Such notes are not sent via text messaging but through a subversive technique called Bluejacking, in which a Bluetooth device's name is replaced with a short message meant to be picked up by neighboring devices.

BlueJacking, which unfortunately was - when we think of BlueJacking, we would think "Bluetooth hijacking" because that's what is implied by the use of the suffix "jacking."

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.

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.

The podcasts have been criticised for being too random and having very little to do with bluejacking, but the podcast team and other forum members have said that it represents what bluejacking is about, fun.

Any device with its Bluetooth connection turned on and set to "discoverable" (able to be found by other Bluetooth devices in range) may be susceptible to Bluejacking, and possibly to Bluesnarfing when, and if, Bluesnarfing of the current Bluetooth security becomes possible.