Bluejacking for those of you unaware, as I was, of what it entails, is the practice of sending, via a bluetooth cell phone, anonymous messages to unknown recipients. It's not rocket science, a message is created along with a phone book entry and when send is pressed the device 'hunts' for a bluetooth device to receive the message. As blue tooth technology has a range of approximately 10 meters the recipient will usually be within sight.
The purpose, if you can call it a purpose, of this activity is purely the mirth and amusement those participating derive from watching an unknown person's reaction to receiving a message, the origins of which they don't know.
This relatively inane malarky is apparently the new fad, craze, call it what you will but until today I had never seen it done, doubtless, I thought, I am not of the age group that participates in these kind of activities and anyways with no bluetooth enabled device in my possession I was never going to be the subject of someone else's prank.
Well today for the first time I was witness to this carry on. A friend came into work fiddling with his phone and when I asked him what on earth he was doing it transpired he was bluejacking. Hello?..... this guy is a similar age to myself!!
We chatted for a short time and I merrily made fun of him for engaging in such a juvenile pass-time, he continued intermittently to attempt to bluejack someone in the vicinity, all the time I ignored his fiddlings, aside from the odd small chastisement that a man of his age was doing this at all! Minutes passed and eventually there was someone in range, it would seem that bluetooth is not all the rage in this backwater, given the time it took to get a 'hit'!
I am ashamed to say that despite my misgivings, watching the stranger who had received the message looking slightly bemused and befuddled was mildly amusing!
That said I don't imagine participating myself and nor do I imagine the amusement being very long lived! It would seem that 'craze' or not in the rest of the world it has not caught on here in any big way and even assuming that does, in a very short time, I can only imagine it becoming at best somewhat irritating and at worst something more sinister.
There is, in theory at least, a code of ethics designed to ensure that bluejacking is is not abused, though some may argue that it is an abuse of the technology in the first place but what concerns me is the anonymity.
Anonimity has always enabled those cowards, social misfits and worse, that wish to harass others in some form the feeling of 'safety', of not being able to be caught or to take responsibility for their actions and I see no reason why this will be any different. All too easily, despite any half baked codes of ethics, that rely soley on the individual to abide by them, I can imagine bluejacking becoming a tool of bullies both adolescent and otherwise....... and just consider for a moment how you would feel, as for instance, a lone woman sat on the tube travelling home after work, if you where to receive an anonymous message saying maybe, "hey you, lady in the pink skirt, I'm watching you".
Unnerving at best and whilst it may be someone's idea of a practical joke I'm damn sure it wouldn't be mine.
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