A new app alerts you if someone nearby is wearing smart glasses

One of the main problems with “luxury surveillance” devices, similar astute glasses with baked-in video signaling cameras, is that they often look indistinguishable from regular eyewear, meaning you mightiness beryllium recorded without knowing it.

But present determination is an app that tin observe and alert you erstwhile idiosyncratic adjacent is wearing astute glasses, oregon perchance different always-recording tech.

The Android app, aptly named Nearby Glasses, perpetually scans for adjacent signals that emit from Bluetooth-enabled tech, specified arsenic wearable devices made by Meta (and Oakley) and Snap.

The app launches astatine a clip arsenic determination is an expanding absorption against ever signaling oregon listening devices, which critics accidental process accusation astir adjacent radical who bash not springiness their consent. 

Yves Jeanrenaud, who made the app, archetypal spoke to 404 Media astir the task and said helium was successful portion inspired to marque Nearby Glasses aft speechmaking the autarkic publication’s reporting into wearable surveillance devices, including however Meta’s Ray-Bans astute glasses person been used successful migration raids and to film and harass enactment workers.

On the app’s task page, Jeanrenaud described astute glasses arsenic an “intolerable intrusion, consent neglecting, horrible portion of tech.”

Jeanrenaud told TechCrunch successful an email that his information came from “witnessing the sheer standard and inhumane quality of the maltreatment these astute glasses are progressive in.” Jeanrenaud besides cited Meta’s determination to implement look designation arsenic a default feature successful its astute glasses, “which I see to beryllium a immense floodgate pushed unfastened for each kinds of privacy-invasive behaviour.”

The app works by listening for adjacent Bluetooth signals that incorporate a publicly assigned identifier unsocial to the Bluetooth device’s manufacturer. If the app detects a Bluetooth awesome from a adjacent hardware instrumentality made by Meta oregon Snap, the app volition nonstop the idiosyncratic an alert. (The app besides allows users to adhd their ain circumstantial Bluetooth identifiers, allowing the idiosyncratic to observe a broader scope of wearable surveillance gadgetry.)

ScreenshotImage Credits:Yves Jeanrenaud

Jeanrenaud said that the app whitethorn beryllium prone to mendacious positives. This means the app whitethorn observe a adjacent virtual world headset made by Meta and alert the idiosyncratic reasoning it is simply a brace of astute glasses made from the aforesaid instrumentality maker. That said, virtual world headsets are usually larger and much evident to idiosyncratic that they’re wearing the device.

To effort this out, I loaded the app connected an Android telephone and walked astir my city’s neighborhood, and recovered (to my surprise) nary astute glasses wearers, and did not person an alert.

But since the app allows it, I added a circumstantial Bluetooth identifier (0x004C), which allowed maine to hunt for adjacent devices made by Apple — and my trial instrumentality instantly flooded with alerts (as you mightiness expect), apt picking up each Apple-made instrumentality successful my adjacent proximity. 

This showed that the app works arsenic designed.

Jeanrenaud is inactive adding caller features, and that determination is request for an iPhone app, but that it depends connected spare clip and availability.

Speaking of the app, Jeanrenaud said: “Of course, it’s a method solution to a societal occupation (which is amplified by technology), and it won’t spell distant anytime soon,” and described the app arsenic a “desperate enactment of resistance, hoping it would assistance astatine slightest someone.”

Spokespeople for Meta and Snap did not respond to TechCrunch’s requests for comment.