Bluejack City 
Page 3

 Once a person gets a capable phone or PDA, successfully bluejacking someone is relatively simple. The prospective bluejacker must simply create a new entry in their phone’s contact list with the message they want to send as the name of the contact. Instead of making a contact with the name “Roger”, for example, the name might be “Is that hairpiece real?”

In order to initiate a connection with anything (such as a wireless headset), Bluetooth-capable phones can send out signals to “sniff” for other, compatible devices in the immediate area. Nearby phones reply with whatever identity information the owner has chosen to put into his or her device. Some may simply list T610, while others might have a name, like SMan, Sparky or Plucky. Depending on the number of Bluetooth-capable phones in the area, a bluejacker might see several names displayed on his or her phone’s screen. The initial reason for making these phone-to-phone connections possible was to facilitate the exchange of contact information such as that found in an address book. Bluejackers, however, have come up with a way to use the feature for entertainment purposes. Once a potential victim has been located, the bluejacker simply sends them the contact from their phone book, leaving the victim wondering if their hair really does look fake.

In the same way that someone can get an e-mail and read the subject line before opening or deleting it, a bluejacker is able to get his or her quip across without requiring a victim to accept anything or establish a secure phone-to-phone link. Messages can be so long because the “name” field in a contact list can include nearly 250 characters. Because Bluetooth does not require a phone to connect to the Internet or connect to the service provider’s network (as do other types of messaging), there is no fee associated with the practice, either.

To a bluejacker, thrills come from the fact that in ideal cases, the recipient of one of their messages won’t have a clue as to who sent it. Because of Bluetooth’s short range, bluejackers also need to be in close proximity to their “victims”. Dozens of energetic stories about successful escapades fill the message boards on bluejackq.com as enthusiasts describe the places where they found and messaged unsuspecting victims or even followed them around a mall, all the while sending multiple messages and reveling in the victim’s sheer befuddlement.