JEDDAH, 25 April 2007 — Misuse of Bluetooth technology by young men and women is increasing in Saudi Arabia. A recent study found that pornographic material accounted for nearly 70 percent of messages exchanged by teenagers. Abdullah ibn Mohammed Al-Rasheed, associate professor at the College of Dawa and Information in Riyadh, who conducted the study, said 88 percent of girls had been victims of such misuse. Rasheed presented his study at a seminar organized by the King Fahd Security Academy. The study focused on teenage boys detained by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice for harassing girls in the Qasim region.
“The flash memory of mobile phones taken from teenagers showed 69.7 percent of 1,470 files saved in them were pornographic and 8.6 percent were related to violence,” said Rasheed. About 99.2 percent of people surveyed, mostly students, military officers and businessmen, used Bluetooth in public gatherings.
Bluetooth wireless technology is the short-range wireless standard for personal connectivity of a broad range of electronic devices. Bluetooth works when two devices are “paired” or configured to recognize each other, allowing them to connect and share data. Bluetooth has gained a bad reputation in the Kingdom, mostly because people do not understand how to prevent its abuse. When two Bluetooth devices are paired, the pairing must be done in what is called “Discoverable” mode. After the pairing is completed, the devices should be switched back to nondiscoverable mode.
Addressing the seminar, Rasheed emphasized the need for imposing deterrent punishment on those who misuse Bluetooth. According to the new law on combating e-crime, people involved in crimes such as Internet hacking and misuse of mobile cameras will be jailed for not more than a year and fined not more than SR500,000 or given either punishment. Rasheed conducted a separate study of 1,200 women aged between 18 and 25, which showed that 82 percent of them use Bluetooth continuously. About 44 percent use it in the market, 26 percent keep it open always and in all places, 15 percent use it in restaurants and 10 percent in wedding halls.
About 85 percent believed that Bluetooth was safe for communicating with the opposite sex. Ninety-nine percent believed that the device had broken the barrier of social taboo and traditions. About 77 percent of girls admitted that they had used Bluetooth, even inside the Grand Mosque in Makkah; 45 percent used fake names, 33 percent left their e-mail addresses visible and 12 percent exchanged mobile numbers.
Four young Saudis were arrested a year ago for taking pictures of girls and publishing them on the Internet and on mobile phones. They used Bluetooth for distributing the pictures of the girls they harassed. A Saudi woman recently sought police protection after her husband threatened to spread sexually explicit pictures and videos of her by Bluetooth if she did not comply with his demands to be allowed to continue relationships with other women.
