Bluetooth is a technology that accompanies us every day through various devices such as smartphones, tablets, speakers, headphones, watches… that allow them to be linked together and take advantage of their services. It is so many times we leave it activateda practice that, although it is widely used, we must have a series of considerations when we are not using it.
Don’t leave Bluetooth on for these reasons
Technology advances very fast. One consequence of this is that the advice or truth What we thought we knew regarding a certain technology are no longer as true as they were a few years ago. Some time ago we saw it with some tips to extend the battery of your smartphone.
Advice that, on occasions, we have been dragging from the time when batteries were different. The same goes for another common piece of advice, the one that says that being always connected is good. leave activated in our devices the Bluetooth function… but this is not always the best, really.
And no; The truth is that it is not good to have Bluetooth activated when we are not using it or when we are not connected to it. This is for no other reason than because we can be more vulnerable than at other times when we have, for example, mobile data open. But what do we have with it?
You may be more vulnerable
As you know, what it does is connect different devices through a radio frequency link in the 2.4Ghz band and as you can imagine, it is constantly sending data, and this is where the main reason is that it is not good to leave it permanently on.
These connections have been standardized to such an extent and they are so useful on a day-to-day basis that, normally, once they are activated they are not deactivated once more for a long time. Because WiFi or 4G and 5G connections may not be entirely the case, but in Bluetooth the truth is that once connectivity is turned on, it is later is always on.
It may seem that keeping the Bluetooth of the mobile device always on does not pose any type of problem for the smartphone, but the reality is that any cyber criminal can take advantage of this for data theft or even much worse situations.
This is why we say that disabling it reduces the remote attack surface of devices and can also prevent you from unintentionally connecting to unknown Bluetooth devices and services. Or what is the same; it should be enabled only when actively used.
It is best if it is enabled only when actively used
Otherwise, this wireless connection can be the main way for hackers to enter our mobile. They seek to intercept certain messages we send that contain confidential information to later sneak into our private accounts.
In addition to changing the data that we send to impersonate us and supplant the identity. Below we show you what are the different dangers that affect the Bluetooth connection and what measures to take to protect yourself.
- Bluebugging. These types of attacks are the most serious and take advantage of ‘bugs’ in the identification of the device to control it completely. The goals of attackers are diverse, from cyber espionage to data theft, virus propagation, and even the creation of botnets (computer robots).
- Ataque Man-In-The-Middle. This is one of the main dangers of having Bluetooth turned on are cyber attacks, such as the well-known Man-in-the-Middle, a classic in terms of threats to communications. It consists of an attacker who gets in the way of the connection between two devices, allowing him to read what is being sent and even modify that data.
- Bluejacking. Another danger is bluejacking, which consists of the massive sending of spam between devices connected to Bluetooth. In this case, the attacker uses the system protocol to send unsolicited messages to the victim through a vCard (personal electronic card), a note or a contact. He often uses the device name itself as spam to be more effective.
As you can see, it is best to disable Bluetooth once we are not using it. It may be that we have the advantage of a better or faster connection with other devices, but this has a much lower weight if we take into account the fact that it poses a danger to the information that is stored on the device itself.
