ZuckOff protects against spies: the new app against Meta’s smart glasses

For a few weeks now, ZuckOff is available on the App Store, an app designed to detect the presence of Meta’s smart glasses nearby, thereby identifying who might be filming without the people around them being aware.

The name, a play on the surname of Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta, humorously nods to the app’s controversial target: the company’s smart glasses, which have been at the center of American headlines for being used by some users to film strangers, often women, without their consent.

How ZuckOff, the app that detects Meta’s smart glasses, works

The app was created by Pawel Szydlowski, a 30-year-old Polish programmer, who said he drew inspiration from accounts of people who used the glasses to secretly film others or to harass strangers on the street.

The app identifies the Bluetooth signals transmitted by the smart glasses and estimates their approximate distance, showing on the main screen the probable proximity of a nearby device.

To reach this result, Szydlowski bought several models of smart glasses and studied the Bluetooth Low Energy signals they transmit, comparing them with an archive of hardware signatures to recognize the individual models and estimate their approximate distance.

It should be noted that detection does not prove that a recording is actually in progress at that moment, just as the absence of detection does not exclude the presence of other smart glasses or cameras nearby.

ZuckOff is available for free on Android and iOS, with a paid Pro version that allows you to receive notifications about nearby glasses detected even when the app is not open in the foreground.

We should note that ZuckOff is not the first nor the only app of this kind: we had already discussed it in July about AntiZuck, a similar iPhone app (paid) capable of recognizing also Snap, Amazon and other models besides Meta’s.

Why an app like ZuckOff was created

Szydlowski explained that he was especially struck by how, in many online videos shot with these glasses, the faces of the people filmed were almost never blurred, and how in some cases the people involved were later publicly identified by users in the comments.

Meta’s camera-equipped smart glasses have generated controversy from the start. The risks of non-consensual filming are at the center of a debate in the USA (and beyond), and the device has repeatedly been at the center of headlines: among the most discussed cases, a famous New York nightclub announced a permanent ban for anyone wearing them, with bans also added in some courtrooms in the UK and New York, as well as in some Norwegian schools.

Meta’s response to the criticisms

In recent weeks Meta has intensified its communications to defend the product, arguing that the goal is not to enable secretly filming strangers.

Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s Chief Technology Officer, said in an Instagram video that the camera was designed to be noticed by the people around you. In the same period, Meta disabled thousands of glasses that were found to be tampered with to keep the small LED indicator lit that signals when the device is recording.

Also Instagram, owned by Meta, spoke up on the content front with the deactivation of two profiles with over a million followers each, due to non-consensual recordings at work and filmed approaches without the consent of the people involved. Nevertheless, videos of this kind continue to circulate on the platform.

Meta considers a camera-free version

Public pressure is reportedly pushing Meta to rethink its strategy on smart glasses. According to some sources, the company is ready to present at the upcoming Meta Connect event, on September 23 and 24, a camera-free version of the glasses, equipped instead with six built-in microphones, speakers and a button to summon the Meta AI assistant.

For all the latest on the Meta ecosystem, you can find our most recent articles in GizChina.it’s Meta section.