Saudi's Use Bluetooth for Swapping Porn
A recent study carried out in Saudi Arabia has found significant "misuse" of the Bluetooth facilities in mobile phones, predominantly for sending pornographic material between handsets. 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.
Abdullah ibn Mohammed Al-Rasheed, associate professor at the College of Dawa and Information in Riyadh, who conducted the study, told Arab News that 88 percent of girls had been victims of such misuse. Rasheed presented his study at a seminar organized by the King Fahd Security Academy.
Naturally, as only people detained by the "morality police" are subject of the survey, it is quite possible that the vast majority of Bluetooth usage is perfectly conventional.
"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.
The study also found that about 85% believed that Bluetooth was safe for communicating with the opposite sex, and 99% believed that the device had broken the barrier of social taboo and traditions."
Posted to the site on 27th April 2007
