A 30 year old Polish software developer he accomplished an app for iPhone able to detect the presence of Meta smart glasses in the vicinity and estimate the distance through the Bluetooth signals transmitted by the devices. The application is called Zuckoff and was downloaded from around 5,000 people in the first month of launch.
The developer, Pawel Szydlowski, purchased several models of smart glasses and cataloged their Bluetooth fingerprints. Subsequently he developed software capable of comparing the signals detected by the smartphone with the catalog created. When both the unique identifier and the manufacturer identifier match, the app can identify nearby device.
Zuckoff is available freebut it also offers a paid version that allows you to receive notifications in the background. According to Szydlowski, the reason behind the project is simple: society should at least have the right to know when someone is recording. The app therefore aims to offer passers-by a tool to make a problem that is normally difficult to identify more visible.
Meta smart glasses at the center of some controversy
In the past, several facilities have chosen to ban smart glasses directly, including cinemas, schools and some UK pubs. Even the indicator light that signals recording has been bypassed with very simple solutions, prompting Meta to intervene so that the glasses stop recording when the LED is covered. However, these systems continue to have several limitations.
The approach used by Zuckoff does not involve the interception of communicationshacking of devices or access to recorded content. The app simply listens to publicly broadcast Bluetooth signals from the glasses to help other devices locate them, comparing them to fingerprints collected by the developer. There are already two Android tools that work similarly.
However, the solution has important limitations: detecting a pair of glasses it doesn’t mean you know if it’s actually recordingdoes not allow the wearer to be identified and does not help those who do not have a smartphone with the app installed.
