Bluetooth technology has come a long way since its invention in 1994, it’s also grown immensely in popularity among users. Now speakers, headphones, TVs, and even cars use bluetooth technology to connect to our phones.
Did you know that there was a risk to having your bluetooth turned on constantly though? There is and hackers can use bluetooth technology to access sensitive information on your phone. Things like payment information, private conversations, and photos can all be at risk if your phone is compromised by a bluetooth hacker.
We’ll go over the different forms of bluetooth interference and how you can protect yourself from this threat.
What Is Bluetooth Interference?
There are several different methods of gaining your information via bluetooth. Three of the most common ways of hacking into your phone are known and Bluejacking, Bluesnarfing, and Bluebugging:
Bluejacking
Say you enter a coffee shop to do some work. You have both your computer and phone’s bluetooth enabled so that you can transfer photos to your PC from your cell. All of a sudden you start getting unwanted spam messages on both devices. This is bluejacking. There’s no real hack involved in this form of interference, just a lot of annoying spam messages.
The spammer is in the area and can send these messages via the bluetooth network.
Bluesnarfing
Though bluesnarfing sounds like something a Smurf might do, it’s actually quite serious. This refers to when a hacker gains remote access to your bluetooth device through the bluetooth network. If your device is in discovery mode it can be accessed by hackers in your area. Bluesnarfing gives hackers access to any and all information on your device, like contacts, financial information, and conversations. Worst of all, you won’t have any idea they’ve gained access.
Bluebugging
Bluebugging is like bluesnarfing, but it’s on your mobile phone. Similar to bluesnarfing the hacker will gain access to your phone when it’s in discovery mode. From there the hacker will hijack your phone and your information. Again, like bluesnarfing, bluebugging is totally undetectable.
How to Prevent Bluetooth Interference Phone Scams
It’s best to turn off your phone’s bluetooth when you’re not using it. This is the only real way to prevent this scam from happening to you. Thankfully, phone software engineers have built a lot of safeguards to protect consumers from these types of attacks. Only very skilled hackers can gain access via bluetooth.
Today phone scammers have resorted to phishing as a much easier way of gaining access to a person’s information.
How to Report Bluetooth Interference
Unfortunately, bluetooth interference is impossible to detect, but as mentioned earlier you can protect yourself by turning off bluetooth when not using it. It’s more important to be on the lookout for phishing scams nowadays.
Watch out for the IRS scam, tech support scams, and loan scams. You can investigate scams and the phone numbers behind them by using our reverse phone lookup app for iPhone. If you don’t have an iPhone, you can still learn about phone scams and check unknown numbers in our online phone directory.