Bluetooth & Kids

[timbo343]

Is anyone else having this problem with bluetooth and kids. They have found a new way to get pictures and music onto the system.
Is there anyway that bluetooth can be banned via group policy or a software restriction tool.

Thanks

Tim

[iatkinson]

Where in your system have you got bluetooth enabled?

[timbo343]

i didnt know i had it enabled.

[iatkinson]

It must either be enabled on some proprietry device or the kids are plugging in bluetooth dongles to transmit data. Most of these i've come across require drivers so if you disallow students from installing then these shouldn't work...i think. Another option is to disable USB ports on student use machines.

[FN-GM]

Yes but if you disable USB ports the students who behave them selves. wont be able to use USB pens, also timbo might have USB keyboards and mice. If the computers have integrated Bluetooth can you disable it in device manager?

[timbo343]

From what ive heard, the kid had a bluetooth dongle, but ive managed to find fsquirt.exe in windows/system32. I ran it on my machine and it brings up the bluetooth transfer wizard. Ive put fsquirt.exe in the software restriction policy and in the dont run specific applications so will see what that does

[FN-GM]

bluetooth seems a long way round to do get music on there areas, i would have thought they would e-mail or store them on USB

[timbo343]

Yeah, thats what i thought, but i think its kids trying to be clever

[FN-GM]

Well what you could do is go in a class room search for Bluetooth devices on your phone if you see any were it shows the students name confiscate the phone.

[timbo343]

could do, but most kids have bluetooth turned on their phones, like when im syncing with my phone and pc, i get a load of devices

[bishopsgarthstockton]

The kids here are not allowed to bring the mobile phones to school. any one caught with a mobile phone has it taken off them

[Geoff]

Deploy a site wide WiFi network, that'll screw up bluetooth.

[Skoggmeiger]

The kids here are not allowed to bring the mobile phones to school. any one caught with a mobile phone has it taken off them

How did the parents react to this policy? I think it's great.

[FN-GM]

Deploy a site wide WiFi network, that'll screw up bluetooth.

Doesn't mess up my bluetooth

[enjay]

You can set Bluetooth enabled PCs not to look for or allow other devices to connect. I've done this on the PCs which have Bluetooth keyboards and the like, so that people can't do anything odd.

I like FN_GM's idea about searching for devices, but he's clearly never tried it - the phone names very rarely come back with anything helpful for identifying the owner.

All that aside though, I'm not sure that blocking Bluetooth is really the solution to the root problem here, i.e. that of unwanted files on the network. Once you ban Bluetooth, they will just bring the files in on pen drives or email them; block all that and they will host them on their own websites and download them!