IBM brings Bluetooth to tennis fans, McAfee brings 'em down
By Donald Melanson 
posted Jul 5th 2006 7:59PM
posted Jul 5th 2006 7:59PM
Anticipating the flurry of excitement surrounding Wimbledon, IBM decided to go all out for the event and outfit trees around London with Bluetooth technology so fans can keep track of scores via their cellphone when they aren't near a TV or at the match itself. Not a bad idea, if you ask most people -- except for McAfee, that is. They're warning that by leaving your phone's Bluetooth function turned on all the time you might as well be begging for a virus -- not an entirely unreasonable warning, given that it's happened before. While McAfee's not telling people to avoid using the service all together, they do recommend that you set your phone to hiddend and only turn on the Bluetooth when you intend to use it, as well as practice a bit of common sense, like not installing applications or opening files that you weren't expecting to receive, and to back up your phone's data regularly. It's not clear what, if anything, the Bluetooth system will be used for after the tournament's over.[Via textually.org]
yes! please be careful with bluetooth, because, as we all know too well, there are idiots out there who'd just love to scramble your phone. what a pitiful society where we can't trust the person we're standing next to.
afterward, the bluetooth could be used for advertisements, or simulcasting.
Mcafee seem intent on focusing on the downside of technology advances. Whilst there are ne'er-do-wells out there who are intent on mischief, the bluetooth medium, even in SW19, is hardly an oportunity for mass unrest and as such is probably not worth their while. I mean why upset a few mobiles when you could creat a virus that messes with millions of pc's.
My bluetooth is on 24/7, and not hidden. I use a WM5 device and there are 3 or 4 known viruses out there for WM5 and none of them do any damage. Also when i did use a S60 device there were 2 or 3 viruses you had to worry about. All they did was use your memory to jump around from phone to phone. All are easily removable and don't erase/harm any data on your device. I don't think we need to worry about bluetooth viruses just yet. Plus mcafee is probably just wanting people to purchase their mobile virus scanner. Its all a fake scare like the cold war and y2k... you get my point.