How To Monitor Bluetooth Phones Around You

I have reviewed several free utilities from popular developer Nir Sofer before and have found them to be really useful, portable and stable. So the release of a new utility is always worth a look.

The latest is called BluetoothLogView – this is not a hacking tool to find out a phone number or eavesdrop on conversations.

BluetoothLogView – A free, tiny and portable program (doesn’t need to be installed). It works on all versions of Windows from XP up to and including Windows 7 but  requires a Bluetooth dongle that works with the standard Bluetooth module of Windows (not a third party).

From the developer’s website – it lets you monitor the activity of Bluetooth devices around you. Every time that a new Bluetooth device arrives near your area, and every time it leaves your area, a new log line is added to the program window with information including:

  • Device Name, Type and Brand
  • Event Time
  • Event Type (‘Device Arrival’ or ‘Device Left’)

How To Use BluetoothLogView

Make sure that your Bluetooth dongle/adapter is plugged in and working.

  • Download the program in a zip file from Nirsoft at the bottom of the page here.
  • Unzip (extract) the zip file and run the BluetoothLogView.exe program file to open the program. It will constantly scan your area for Bluetooth devices, and will add a new log line every time that a new device arrives in your area, and when the device leaves your area.
  • Obviously you must leave the program running for it to work but you can minimize it and just leave it running in the background.

bluetoothlogview

Anyone used to NirSoft utilities will be familiar with the layout and find their way around easily – as is common, you can select one or more log items and then save them into text/xml/csv/html file by using the File \ ‘Save Selected Items’ option from the menu bar (or the floppy disk icon).

BluetoothLogView lets you specifiy a description (e.g. son/dad) for every Bluetooth device (displayed under the ‘Description’ Column every time that this device is detected). To set the description, simply double-click the log line and in the Properties window, type the desired description.

Conclusion

I am generally a huge fan of NirSoft utilities but this one leaves me slightly underwhelmed. It is no doubt very clever but I’m racking my brains as to why anyone would need to use it? If the Bluetooth device is switched off it won’t be picked up, so BluetoothLogView doesn’t really work as a security tracking device.

NirSoft’s view is that “if you have neighbors or family members that use a cellular phone with Bluetooth turned on, you can easily find out when they come home and when they leave”. Which sounds like a harmless bit of fun or a snooper’s charter, depending which way you look at it…

Am I missing some brilliant potential use of such a program or is it a program created just for fun or ‘because you can’ – what do you think?