Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Advertisers Looking Into Bluejacking

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 12:25:45 -0500

Daily Update for Wed, Nov 26 2003
Advertisers Looking Into Bluejacking
Contributed by mmasnick on Wed, Nov 26 2003

While it's not at all a surprise, the latest news is that a PR company has put
out a paper telling companies how they can use bluejacking for promotional
purposes. Bluejacking, of course, is the newly hyped sneaky trick of sending a
message to someone else's mobile phone without them realizing who's doing the
sending. You have to be relatively close to that person, of course, but you can
just imagine how annoying it will be when you're getting all sorts of random
promotional bluejacked messages every time you walk down the street. Once again,
a desperate plea to lazy marketers: annoying the hell out of customers doesn't
make them more likely to buy what you have to sell.

===================================================================

Businesses prepare to bluejack your phone
[PC Pro] 11:24

Even your mobile phone might not be able to avoid the curse of spam, now that
the marketing industry is waking up to the advertising potential of Bluetooth.

As we reported in October, Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones have spawned
bluejacking, the process of anonymously sending text and images from one phone
to another.

However, what started out as an innocent pastime could become a pervasive
marketing tool, outside the control of privacy protection laws.

UK PR company Rainier PR has published a white paper explaining how bluejacking
can be used as a promotional medium. One company, TagText, have already begun
making avatars available in the hope that phone users will begin sending them to
each other. Its founder, Russell Buckley, explained that, 'The rise in
bluejacking couldn't have been more timely.... Not only can we capitalise on the
trend, but using images adds a new dimension that even most bluejackers haven't
yet considered.'
Buckley justifies the practice as just another form of guerilla marketing.

'If you don't shy away from other forms of guerilla marketing like fly posting
or giant image projection, you may want to think about this new medium,' he
said, though there seems to be a fundamental difference between something stuck
on a wall and an unsolicited message appearing on your phone.

Such viral marketing techniques, however, are not the most worrying prospect. As
Rainier's says, 'Location-based services are the most interesting, yet
controversial application of bluejacking.

'A supermarket could send Bluetooth promotional messages to customers as the
approached a particular aisle. In the High Street or shopping centre individual
shops could send electronic coupons to consumers as they walked past.'

To the impartial observer, this is nothing but a new form of spam.

As the paper says, 'Spam is universally detested. Given the intimate
relationship between a consumer and their mobile phone, the opportunity for a
company to alienate a consumer with a misdirected Bluetooth message is likely to
be even greater.' But by its very nature, bluejack messages are unsolicited, and
what is spam if it isn't unsolicited messages.

'The world does not need Bluespam,' Rainier continues. 'The danger is that if
the marketing community abuses Bluetooth for commercial gain, users will simply
disable the feature on their phones.'

That would appear, for now, to be the only option. Imminent EU regulations on
privacy protection that should prevent unwanted SMS marketing messages may well
not cover bluejacking, as it uses short-range radio signals rather than
communications networks.

Bluetooth phone users will doubtlessly be hoping that marketing organisations
take considerable care when using such an intrusive medium; few people,
especially anyone who has been deluged with email spam, will have faith in them.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/?http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/news_story.php?id=50856
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