AMSTERDAM, Thursday

Notebook thieves do not need to break into a car to check for the presence of a notebook computer. A simple technical trick enables them to detect notebooks from outside.

Thieves uses a mobile telephone with bluetooth to seek contact with a notebook, that is ie. left behind in the booth of a car. They are looking for notebooks with bluetooth enabled and in standby mode. Notebooks that are completely shutdown are invisible to the seeking mobile phones of thieves.

A large number of notebook users have enabled the bluetooth by default and also they use the standby mode to temporarily shutdown their notebooks. Thieves profit from this kind of user behavior.

Originally pubished in Dutch in De Telegraaf