Switching off your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth doesn’t just mean your devices are safer to use, but also saves energy and makes them faster when they are active.
It is mainly older Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices which suffer from vulnerabilities enabling hackers to remotely attack them. They are also able to find out a lot about someone by simply recording active radio connections. Most devices for instance broadcast the name of all networks with which they are to “connect automatically” during start-up. Such network names can disclose quite a lot about someone, since information like the name of your employer or your favourite cafe can be gleaned from this.
To switch off any radio connections you don’t need doesn’t just make you less prone to attacks, but will potentially also speed up all other devices’ connections within wireless range. This is for instance due to Wi-Fi devices only attempting to broadcast if there is currently no other device nearby occupying the same channel. The fewer devices there are active on a certain channel, the greater the opportunity for them to exchange data with each other.
It is therefore well worth regularly switching off any radio connections you don’t need, and to only switch them on when actually needed. There may sometimes also be an option to do so automatically. Most Wi-Fi access points for instance can be switched off for a predefined period (for instance between 00:00 midnight to 04:00 a.m. in the morning) via a timer function.
Further information on Wi-Fi can be found here.
