1 yr. ago • 92%

Why are there loads of unnamed bluetooth devices around me?

I live in a big city in the center. When i activate "Show bluetooth devices without names" in the developer settings of my android 13 phone, there appear loads of this devices. I have no clue what they are. Does anyone know? Are that the bluetooth nanobots of the vaxxinated people? (/s to last question!)

75 comments

Probably just because you live in a big city and there are a shitload of bluetooth devices around. If you're worried, try moving out of bluetooth range and scanning again to see if any of them don't change.

126
All those spiders that you're never more than 10 feet from have started using fitness wearables, and with 8 arms each that's a lot of bluetooth nearby.

119
- Don't forget the birds. They want us to think they're eating the spiders. It's actually more like Uber for spiders, they use Bluetooth for ride hailing.
  
  28
  
  Birds don't use Bluetooth. They use 5g in order to connect to the government surveillance drone network
  
  26
Bluetooth devices only broadcast their name when in pairing mode, at other times only the mac address is available. In other words, these are just people's Bluetooth devices like headphones, cellphones, airtags, etc.

116
- … tv’s, soundbars, remotes, keyboards, mouses, media players,… fucking toothbrushes, vibrators, mirrors, etcs.
  
  79
  
  Please don't fuck toothbrushes :(
  
  55
They may just be other people's various devices. Maybe IoT devices or devices not fully set up. If you're living near a store/above a store, those might be Bluetooth beacons that track people through the store.

106
- TIL about Bluetooth beacons. I assumed people were tracked, but I didn’t consider it was via Bluetooth.
  
  38
  
  Bluetooth personal networks have been a thing for about a decade and are used for monitoring traffic density and flow by third party companies. It's partly why Apple was removing their aux ports and pushing for Bluetooth so much, they are making money with tracking their statistically significant user base. Google does it too and it's most readily evident with Maps traffic filter.
  
  If you've wondered why enabling Bluetooth asked for iPhone location to be enabled, now you know.
  
  60
- Bird aren’t real
  
  2
Because you have lots of BT devices around you!

70
- Permanently Deleted
  
  49
Stasi listening devices. We never went away, comrade.

45
- Nowadays, people buy them out of free will. They give them names and ask them to play Despacito.
  
  23
- Can confirm (posted from a Stasi listening device)
  
  16
- God dammit.
  
  7
I have replaced almost every light bulb in my house with smart bulbs which feature both bluetooth and zigbee connections. It's around 40 devices. If your neighbour has smart bulbs or other devices, I guess that could be a large part of it.

40
- Started with smart bulbs, but very quickly moved to actual smart switches+plugs instead.
  
  Smart bulbs automatically turn on when power goes out and back on. (so you can still control them from the regular switch) This is anoying af with how frequently I get short power outages.
  
  2
  
  My wife and I used to have some smart switches in a previous house that were set to turn on when we came home. Woke the kids up a few times forgetting to turn that off before coming back from a night out.
  
  1
Our Aldi now has electronic price tags for each product in the centre aisles. I wonder if they're Bluetooth.

32
- I have an idea, there are some restaurants around, maybe its these restaurant pagers.
  
  10
- It varies. Some of them use Bluetooth Low Energy, some of them use other wireless techniques for lower power and greater range.
  
  9
- They're usually e-ink displays that get their power from NFC, so they're probably not Bluetooth
  
  8
  
  That’s not correct. They run on coin cells and use their own RF protocol. Most use something like zigbee. Others even use light to transfer data.
  
  3
- Usually they use something (but not exactly) zigbee
  
  1
Could be anything, since you're in the middle of a large city center. Could be smart devices, could be FindMys or similar, could be beacons, could be trackers, could be any combination.

[E]. To answer your nanobot question. I guess it could be nanobots, though all of the ones I've ever seen, use NFC. Also, "of the vaxxinated people"? I haven't heard that one before. What is that about?

26
- It's a reference to conspiracy theories about vaccines containing trackers
  
  31
  
  Oh... didn't realize that was a thing. That's.... a bit disturbing....
  
  11
- A ton of devices not currently in discoverable mode too. Smart watches, TVs, etc.
  
  3
I think those are electric scooters if your city has those. When im around a lot of those things my device list looks just like this

20
That's perfectly normal, pay no mind to them or the plumber van parked day and night on the other side of the road.

18
- They are way less undercover around here. Theres a helicopter that spies on everyone 2-3 times a month. No infos on flightradar, no infos directly sent from it. We are all dead soon!
  
  (/s)
  
  3
So many electronics now have a Bluetooth chip, wether they use it or not. If you have AirPods, that’s up to 3 BY devices (each ear plus case), each phone, each computer (+ mouse, keyboard), TV (+ remote controls), game pads, Bluetooth speakers (plus extra of stereo or 5.1). A lot of small devices too now have Bluetooth like some Arduino boards can Raspberry Pi,

12
- Every single node in any form of “smart home” networks including color changing light bulbs
  
  7
  
  Most of those use other networks - Zwave, Zigbee, or WiFi.
  
  6
  
  My god the wifi lightbulbs make me want to cry, at least mine crypto or something with that heat source
  
  3
If I had to guess you probably live in a big city in the center. This means when you activate "Show bluetooth devices without names" in the developer settings of your android 13 phone, there appear loads of devices. You probably have no clue what they are because none of them are your devices so why would you know what they are?

12
- I guess im not smart enough to get what you want...
  
  1
  
  If you live in a city center you are probably in a highly populated area and your phone is receiving the signals from other people's Bluetooth devices in proximity to you and your phone. Basically your seeing the devices of all your neighbors, because that's how wireless Bluetooth transmission works.
  
  12
You can use the 1st half of the mac to lookup the vendor (OUI)

9
Try using RamBLE or nRF Connect to see some more info about the devices

9
- Thx for your suggestions, theyll help.
  
  2
Smart devices like switches, bulbs, outlets, etc; air tags and other brands of Bluetooth tracker; wireless speaker systems, headphones.

Many of these devices won't broadcast a name at all, or will only broadcast a name while pairing.

8
Just in case

8
I see 21 devices in just my house. Many Sonos speakers (no name when not advertising BT input). Several air monitors. All my TVs. A temperature tracker. Three smart switches…

8
There's an app called AirGuard put out by a German university, it scans for air tags in your vicinity. Useful if you are worried about someone slipping an AirTag on your person/belongings to track you.

6
When i activate "Show bluetooth devices without names"

I think that option just shows MAC addresses (or whatever it is BT uses) instead of the devices' names?

5
- It shows all Bluetooth devices in range, whereas normally Android only shows ones which your phone knows the name of, either because they're in pairing mode and thus broadcasting their name, or because you've paired before.
  
  14
  
  Ah, interesting
  
  4
- or whatever it is BT uses
  
  Bluetooth Device Address.
  
  3

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