Shake Gently – advertising technology blog

UK Police Use Bluespam To Appeal For Murder Witnesses

I’ve written about my disappointment with organizations using bluespamming as a way to communicate their message. I think this is a step backwards after the marketing discipline has been working hard toward an opt in process in an effort to win back the trust of consumers after they have been bombarded with SPAM.

Bluespamming definition: Sending spam to Bluetooth-enabled devices. See Bluejacking and Bluesnarfing.

Bluejacking is the sending of unsolicited messages over Bluetooth to Bluetooth-enabled devices such as mobile phones, PDAs or laptop computers.

Bluetooth has a very limited range, usually around 10 metres on mobile phones, but laptops can reach up to 100 metres with powerful transmitters.

Google provides plenty of links about bluespamming as well, if you are interested.

As Gizmodo points out, bluespamming has been made legal in the UK:

Bluespamming, otherwise known as Bluetooth spamming, otherwise known as “Oh, I have a message oh wait I don’t,” has just become extremely legal in the UK. While their Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has a set of guidelines for electronic consumer marketing that regulates spam flow (requiring users to “opt-in” to receive the marketing), they have just removed Bluetooth from their list of regulated communication mediums. So in other words, while a company may not be allowed to email you or send SMS text messages, they can bluespam you every block as you walk through a major city.

Now I read that the police in the UK used bluespamming to try and track down murder witnesses.

Police in Liverpool are using Bluespamming to try and find witnesses (via SMS Text News) to the August murder of an 11-year-old boy outside a pub there.

Apparently a cop car’s been fitted with a Bluetooth transmitter with a 100-meter range, and it pings other phones with a message as it drives around the area.

At first, I was intrigued by the ingenuity of the UK police to put technology to use. And although they had a good reason, I don’t think that using bluetooth and bluespamming everyone close by was the right approach.

Here are a couple reasons why I think it was a bad idea:

1) Not everyone has a bluetooth capable device and knows how to use it. Most people that do know how to use it probably have auto discovery disabled.

2) What kind of precedent would this create? It makes the line a but blurry. Is it ok to SPAM someone (bluespamming fits in the same category of email SPAM in my book) if you have a good reason? What about a fund raising event? Someone searching for a lost cat? From a legal perspective, if its wrong, its wrong, regardless of who or why.

3) What did this message look like? And what about someone in the future impersonating the police and tricking innocent people into doing something that they wouldn’t normally do, but since they think the request is coming from the police, they abide anyway?

4) Lastly, the people in the area probably already knew about the incident, especially the people that had the information that the police was looking for in regards to the case.

What do you think? Are there cases where it would be ok for someone to use bluespamming and you would be ok with it? The only way I would be ok with receiving bluetooth messages would be if I opted in to receive such messages.

Technorati Tags: bluecasting, bluespamming, bluespam, bluetooth, UK, police