This app can detect “perv glasses” in your vicinity

For years, the etiquette around being filmed was fairly simple. If someone pulled out their phone and pointed it at you, you knew what was happening. The rise of smart glasses over the last few years have made that social contract a little harder to navigate. A person can now be wearing what looks like a completely normal pair of sunglasses, while also having a camera and microphone sitting a few centimetres from your face. People have reported spotting them on dates, in public spaces and at venues where recording is restricted. Online, they have even acquired the less-than-flattering nickname “perv glasses”. It raises basic questions about privacy. How does one consent to being filmed when you don’t even know you are on camera?

Polish developer Pawel Szydlowski found a way to scan Bluetooth signals emitted by smart glasses to detect if a pair is being used near us. The 30-year-old launched his app, ZuckOff, that can identify multiple models like the Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta, as well as the Snap Specs. The app picks up stronger signals; the closer a wearable is to the user.

It is worth knowing what ZuckOff does not do. It cannot tell you whether the glasses are recording, who is wearing them, or what their camera is pointed at. It is not going to catch someone filming you across a restaurant. What it can do is tell you that a pair of smart glasses is somewhere nearby, as long as you have the app open, which is still more information than you ever had before. But it does allow you to add your smart glasses to the app to prevent setting off unnecessary alerts.

If you want more than the basic scan, there is a ZuckOff Pro version too. The free version handles the scanning, while Pro, which is available on the iOS and Android for a yearly purchase of ₹999, adds continuous background monitoring, alerts when smart glasses appear, a home-screen widget, longer sighting history and a CSV export.

And there are already real examples of how murky surveillance tech can get. The Internet Freedom Foundation recently supported a Delhi man who sent a legal notice to Meta and an Instagram creator after alleging that he was filmed without his knowledge at a café using Ray-Ban Meta glasses, with the footage later posted online. The glasses have also had a running battle with people trying to disable their recording light, which is meant to make filming visible to everyone around the wearer. After users found ways to cover or physically tamper with the LED, Meta introduced an update designed to detect when the light has been damaged or interfered with and disable the camera. All of this is happening against a much bigger backdrop of surveillance anxiety. While ZuckOff may not be the perfect solution to counter the rising paranoia over living in a surveillance society, it is definitely a step in the right direction.