Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Geek moment: here's an article on thieves using Bluetooth to detect which cars have laptops in the trunks, then stealing from those cars.

I'm confused—how does this work? My laptop is asleep when closed, or off, so Bluetooth isn't active. Even if I had set my laptop to wake on Bluetooth contact, that works for paired Bluetooth mice and keyboards, not phones—so would this *ever* detect a laptop?

My guess is that the thieves, if they are using Bluetooth for this at all, could be looking for discoverable devices, which would always be on, and then they are assuming (probably correctly) that people with Bluetooth devices in their car might also have a laptop there.

Poor tech reporting.