Coming to a phone near you

A couple of places this week have been talking about a new form of advertising, which sends out information from an advert billboard by Bluetooth to a mobile phone. Dubbed Bluecasting, you do have to have Bluetooth enabled and turned on on your phone in order to accept the data, but all the same it does make me wonder a bit.

First of all, as Bruce Schneier says, what’s to stop someone from sending a phone virus in this way, and secondly, would you trust information coming from an advertisement? I know I wouldn’t.

Personally, I always have Bluetooth switched off on my phone (and it needs a passcode in order to activate it) – but I suspect I’m in the minority on that score. A lot of people seem to leave it on all the time – in fact, 14,000 people accepted the data from the prototype adverts – although that was “only” 17% of the 87,000 Bluetooth enabled phones detected by the adverts in a two week period. To me that just seems like a great way to end up with a carked phone. But hey, what would I know?