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My cousin in Seattle kept telling me to turn off Bluetooth when I'm not using it, and I finally listened after my phone tried to connect to a weird 'Free_WiFi' device at the airport.
Has anyone else caught their phone trying to pair with something sketchy like that?
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karen_hart26d ago
Yeah but hear me out on this. Most of those weird Bluetooth names are just people messing around, not actual hackers. I've seen "Free_WiFi" and "FBI_Surveillance_Van_7" at malls for years and nothing ever happened. The real risk is super tiny unless you're walking around with your phone actively accepting every pairing request that pops up, which most modern phones won't do on their own anyway. You'd have to actually go into settings and confirm the connection. It's more of a theoretical thing people read about online than something that regularly happens to real people. Keeping Bluetooth off all the time saves battery but it's not like leaving it on is gonna automatically drain your bank account or anything.
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mark7231mo ago
Yeah, I read an article about that last month. They said some of those weird open Bluetooth names are actually data skimmers. They sit in busy places and try to pull info from any device that pings them. Your cousin is totally right, it's a good habit to just turn it off. I keep mine off now unless I'm actually using my earbuds.
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