Gossip

"Load of hooey" - Bluesnarfing opinion repeated ...

I see that The Boss has been holding forth again about Bluesnarfing - as being less of a security risk than leaving your phone lying around.

What he doesn't mention in his eWeek rant is that he knows all about leaving mobile phones in taxis.

Statistically, he's exaggerating, probably, about how many MPs leave their cellphones lying around; but if he's talking about himself, then he's closer to the truth.

So far, the count is something between six and eight. I know of two phones which were taken out of his hands while he was dialling. His NEC 6063 (a 3G phone) was lifted from his luggage at Barcelona airport last year. He left an antique Sanyo in his pocket and it fell out into a taxi, and was never seen again. Two more fell out of the same badly-designed pocket onto Tube seats (one was returned).

And recently, his "Tanager" SPV was couriered back to him from India, after he left it in Nice on a NetEvents conference, and the CTO of one of India's bigger phone network operators saved it from the trash.

We'll ignore that Samsung phone which was purloined by colleagues and he says the Virgin Siemens models simply stopped working, and he lost them.

What makes him a statistical anomaly, though, is that he hasn't claimed on insurance for a single one. But if he says: "I've lost your phone number, I'm afraid ... " you should believe him. Probably, he's lost it several times ...