The bluetooth hack
Posted by AwarenessThe Definition: The Bluetooth Hack. You may have never heard of the term “blue-jacking”, and you certainly hope you are never its victim. When your phone is blue-jacked, a scammer can take control of your mobile and use it to make himself quite a handsome payday, indeed.
The Mark: Any owner of a Bluetooth enabled mobile phone – if he has forgotten to disable the Bluetooth when he is not using it. As is typical, a mark is someone who is too lazy, or too careless, or too just-plain uninformed. Visitors to this site have no such excuse.
The Scam: The piece of equipment that is key to pulling off this scam is a mobile pocket PC, set up to hunt for a blue-tooth connection. Due to a flaw in many Bluetooth enabled mobile phones, a remote mobile looking for a signal can actually pick up the signal of another nearby mobile. This defect is the only crack in the armor our modern-day cons need to exploit your phone, and your wallet.
Our scammer works in any crowded public place, seemingly intent on his pocket PC, but in reality searching for a signal to blue-jack. When he finds one, he has two jobs: one is to stay in range so he can control the hijacked phone; the other is to use his PC to make a call on the hijacked line. This is where the hustler stuffs his pockets.
Prior to instituting the scam, our con men have set up a premium-rate telephone line, which will charge those who call the line £1.50 per minute of call time. So all our hustler has to do, whilst in range of the mark’s phone, is dial up the premium-rate line using the mark’s connection and keep that connection going as long as possible. Every minute that goes by makes him a little richer.