Comment Re:Please start doing it. (Score 5, Informative) 90
I find the discussion for this article a little out of touch with reality... except the post before this which made mention to disabling settings.
All devices (cell phones, PDAs, computers, etc) with bluetooth have two sets of options when you turn the bluetooth in them on. You can choose to make your device discoverable or not, and connectable or not. For any two devices to continually connect to each other they both have to have connectivity enabled (well duh), and they both have to be paired(one exception to the pairing rule, below). To pair devices, at least one must be discoverable, then the other searches for "discoverable devices." When the discovering device finds the discoverable one you exchange a passkey (so you know it's not Joe Blow's phone across the room), and they're paired. Paired devices will always connect to each other so long as connectivity is enabled on both devices. Discoverability never needs to be turned on unless a new device is being paired or you want to receive a business card or something else that uses the object push profile (which is the exception to the pairing rule).
So the way bluetooth transmits information is different depending on the information being sent. Music for instance needs to be continually streamed, while connecting to the net over bluetooth is more sporadic transmission. To acknowledge this, the bluetooth standard has several different profiles that transmit the data in different ways depending on what is being sent. Devices will only have access to the profiles that the manufacturer decides that device needs. As earlier stated, the object push profile is special, it can transmit data to any discoverable (or already paired) device. This is because the object push profile is only used to send short text-based messages, such as that business card I mentioned.
Thus, I'm going to make the safe assumption that these ads are being sent using bluetooth's object push profile as well.
So let's say you want your bluetooth phone to always be connected to its headset but you don't ever want to receive these ads, the solution is simple. Leave your bluetooth turned on, just don't make it discoverable. It's that easy.
All devices (cell phones, PDAs, computers, etc) with bluetooth have two sets of options when you turn the bluetooth in them on. You can choose to make your device discoverable or not, and connectable or not. For any two devices to continually connect to each other they both have to have connectivity enabled (well duh), and they both have to be paired(one exception to the pairing rule, below). To pair devices, at least one must be discoverable, then the other searches for "discoverable devices." When the discovering device finds the discoverable one you exchange a passkey (so you know it's not Joe Blow's phone across the room), and they're paired. Paired devices will always connect to each other so long as connectivity is enabled on both devices. Discoverability never needs to be turned on unless a new device is being paired or you want to receive a business card or something else that uses the object push profile (which is the exception to the pairing rule).
So the way bluetooth transmits information is different depending on the information being sent. Music for instance needs to be continually streamed, while connecting to the net over bluetooth is more sporadic transmission. To acknowledge this, the bluetooth standard has several different profiles that transmit the data in different ways depending on what is being sent. Devices will only have access to the profiles that the manufacturer decides that device needs. As earlier stated, the object push profile is special, it can transmit data to any discoverable (or already paired) device. This is because the object push profile is only used to send short text-based messages, such as that business card I mentioned.
Thus, I'm going to make the safe assumption that these ads are being sent using bluetooth's object push profile as well.
So let's say you want your bluetooth phone to always be connected to its headset but you don't ever want to receive these ads, the solution is simple. Leave your bluetooth turned on, just don't make it discoverable. It's that easy.
