0

I recently got my parents a Bluetooth speaker, and they are very new to the smartphone arena. What I would like is to disable all of the Bluetooth functionality in their phones except for the ability to play music and place calls through the external speaker. That way, even if an attacker were able to infiltrate their phone through Bluetooth, they would not have any access to stored files/contacts, etc. I'm thinking it would be something like the following:

Global Bluetooth Functionality
Allow apps to:
  Play music   On/Off
  Place calls  On/Off
  Share files  On/Off
  Share contacts  On/Off
  ...

For instance, if a legitimate app or an infiltrator tried to share files while the "Share files" global setting was "Off," they would not be able to because the setting is disabled at a global level. But at the same time, if a speaker was connected and the "Play music" global setting was "On", then it would play fine. Is there such a feature in Android or iPhone? They have one of each, so information for either is appreciated.

Rusty Lemur
  • 101
  • 2
  • maybe a tasker to turn off bluetooth when the home network is not connected – dandavis Jan 09 '17 at 23:34
  • Thanks for the comment, but they will be regularly taking the speaker away from their home network. Still, it is worth considering. – Rusty Lemur Jan 10 '17 at 19:42
  • The problem is, apple don't have that feature available on their iSO operation system yet. If you look at Google's latest android features with their new phones, they have that option to limit what uses and what doesn't use Bluetooth. I had it on my Samsung's galaxy, but now I am suffering for not having it on my iPhone 7! – Ali Aldin Apr 20 '17 at 23:36
  • 2
    This really isn't a thing at all on iOS, or even android AFAIK. As an exercise this is a good question but if you are looking for a real solution I think it's best that you teach them not to accept pairing requests as well as have them turn bluetooth off when they're not using it. – Allison Nov 21 '17 at 08:04
  • If I understand correctly, you are looking to disable parts of the bluetooth stack and leave others enabled. Such granular control over phone functionality is only available on a rooted/jailbroken phone AFAIK. – John Dec 21 '17 at 14:44

1 Answers1

0

I have an Android phone and use it to connect to my Bluetooth headphone, Fitbit and car stereo. Normally I turn BT off when I don't use it, and most of the time I don't. So in the car, I turn it on, when I get out, I turn it off. And sometimes I forget to turn it off, and it stays on for hours.

I live in a highly populated area, and whenever I search for bluetooth devices I see ten or more. Never ever have I had a request to make a connection to my phone. Why? Because my phone is only discoverable when I search for a new device. When I do this, I look for the device that I want, connect, and that's it. When I don't see the device, it stops after a while, and the phone is not discoverable anymore.

So I don't see the problem. Other devices won't see your parents Android phone, and probably the iPhone neither. Only when they connect consciously, this can happen.

Maybe my understanding of BT is wrong, but this is how I thought it works.

Teach them how to reconnect to the speaker. They should know the name of the speaker, what to look for. If they don't see it even if they press the connect button on the speaker, they should wait and not try some random device to see if it works.

You could teach them to disable BT if they don't use it, maybe with a homescreen widget.

SPRBRN
  • 7,379
  • 6
  • 33
  • 37