Last summer my young nephew
visited by train and stayed overnight. Questioning him on arrival, “Yes” he’d
turned off his smart-phone and his tablet computer as well as his e-reader
and Bluetooth® headphones and left his Fit-Bit® at home. He assured me he had
nothing else wireless.
I checked with my EMFields Acousticom2 just to be sure and everything was quiet. We had dinner together and talked until late. He went to bed in the guest room and I turned off the mains, as I routinely do. Imagine then my surprise at about 6am the following morning soundly asleep in the room next door, when I was suddenly and brutally yanked wide awake by repeated slams to my head. I could not endure the beating and had to immediately get up and flee. I checked with my Acousticom2 and sure enough, there was what I deduced was a Bluetooth® transmitting device somewhere in the house. From downstairs it was clear the signal was coming from his room. I went for a walk to get out of range, reluctant to wake my nephew after his long journey and upon my return a couple of hours later I questioned him, quite vigorously.
“No”, he assured me, he “really did not have anything else that could be transmitting.”
A moment later he said,“Ah....It could be the Chipolo®.”
“What the hell is a Chipolo®?” I said, unimpressed.
“Dad gave it to me because I kept losing my keys.” he said. “Its a tracker.”
He ferreted in his bag and produced a little black disc attached to his keys. My meter confirmed it was indeed the offending source of the sudden attack that had catapulted me from my bed.
I checked with my EMFields Acousticom2 just to be sure and everything was quiet. We had dinner together and talked until late. He went to bed in the guest room and I turned off the mains, as I routinely do. Imagine then my surprise at about 6am the following morning soundly asleep in the room next door, when I was suddenly and brutally yanked wide awake by repeated slams to my head. I could not endure the beating and had to immediately get up and flee. I checked with my Acousticom2 and sure enough, there was what I deduced was a Bluetooth® transmitting device somewhere in the house. From downstairs it was clear the signal was coming from his room. I went for a walk to get out of range, reluctant to wake my nephew after his long journey and upon my return a couple of hours later I questioned him, quite vigorously.
“No”, he assured me, he “really did not have anything else that could be transmitting.”
A moment later he said,“Ah....It could be the Chipolo®.”
“What the hell is a Chipolo®?” I said, unimpressed.
“Dad gave it to me because I kept losing my keys.” he said. “Its a tracker.”
He ferreted in his bag and produced a little black disc attached to his keys. My meter confirmed it was indeed the offending source of the sudden attack that had catapulted me from my bed.
A Chipolo® is sealed-for-life, a little larger than a 50 pence piece and costs around £20. A quick on-line search revealed it also comes in a credit-card sized equivalent. Battery life is advertised as a year. Unable to turn it off, we removed the little bugger, wrapped it in aluminium foil in a vain attempt to isolate it and resorted to placing it in the shed far away from the house.
Electro hyper sensitives (EHS) are often affected more severely when they are inactive i.e. when stationary/sleeping so how had I been fine all evening and able to sleep soundly through the night?
It appears, to save battery life, the device hibernates when it gets no response. At around 6am each day, forestry lorries start to come past the house. I can only conclude that a smart-phone in one of the passing cabs, constantly sniffing for any Bluetooth® device, had woken the Chipolo® and me, up. By co-opting other people’s Bluetooth® devices, the short-range Chipolo® transmitter can hop, skip and jump via Wi-Fi and the Internet to anywhere in the world. Low-powered Bluetooth® tracking devices can thus be located even when their paired device is out of range.
How on earth is an EHS sufferer to counter similar silent and insidious attacks from now common personal wireless devices that are typically hidden from view?
How is anyone else supposed to believe the poor unfortunate (and oft ridiculed) EHS sufferer when such occurrences are so far beyond public awareness?
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