So I'm sitting there at the car wash, trying to get my Omnia smartphone to tether to my laptop via Bluetooth (for Internet access via my cellular provider) when I see the attached Bluetooth Device Selection window. Scary stuff, eh kids?

For the uninitiated, I was trying to get my laptop to discover my phone. Just like you can tell your laptop to show you all the WiFi signals in the area, you can see all the Bluetooth devices within range. When you see your phone, headset, PC, etc, in the list, you pick it and then "pair" with it. The 1st 2 items I was already paired with but the 3rd one was a surprise: a cell phone with a Bluetooth device name of YOU GOT VIRUS.

Well at first I was a little concerned about my phone but I shut it off and rescanned and the potentially deleterious disconcerting device remained. I spoke up to the other folks waiting for their cars and asked if anyone had a BT phone and a couple people said they did but nobody seemed to care, which surprised me.

Chances are good that whatever phone had this name was not infected. I asked San Diego Verizon data tech and wireless guru Rene Wilcox about this subject the other day in conjunction to another post I've put up about people being tracked surreptitiously using the GPS in their phones (http://www.ucan.org/blog/telecommunications/communications_technology/who_needs_a_private_eye_when_youve_got_a_cell_phone). I wanted to know if she knew of any way that a rogue application could be installed and launched without your knowledge assuming you have your phone on your person all the time. She said no. If you downloaded something nefarious from the web, it would ask for permission to be installed. What if someone tried to pair their device with your phone via Bluetooth? Most devices ask for your OK and need a passcode though it's a good idea to tell your phone not to be "discoverable" unless you are pairing it.

I asked about the Paris Hilton Address Book Affair. She said that she knew of no way that someone could download a person's address book or other phone contents by Bluetooth without some prior access - for example if a person stole the phone while the owner wasn't looking, paired it to their phone, downloaded info, then returned it undetected. But she made a important observation: if you take your phone to have the data copied to a new phone, at any cellular store, for any carrier, the data remains in the computer device that does the transfer, even after you are done at the store. So, if you're a celeb, be sure that the machine is cleared or shut off before you leave.

So, in this case, rather than being infected, I suspect that the owner named the phone YOU HAVE VIRUS as a joke (and was sitting there smirking as I asked around) or maybe a geek buddy did it while she wasn't watching. Even still, it caught me off guard. Not something you run across every day.

BTW: according to TabloidColumn.com http://www.tabloidcolumn.com/paris-hilton-hacked.html (a trusted source of major breaking news), a 17 year old hacked into Paris Hilton's T-mobile online account, not into her phone.