New app sends warning if Smart Glasses are being worn near you

New mobile app ‘Nearby Glasses’ does what you’d assume, warning you if there’s an active pair of Smart Glasses in your vicinity.

Smart Glasses are becoming increasingly prominent as enormous companies like Meta put their weight behind AI implementation and even facial recognition tech. However, with more widespread use comes more widespread concern.

From surveillance issues to child safety, it turns out that having hidden cameras on your face can lead to some moral and legal quandaries. Not everyone wants to be filmed without consent, and that’s why Yves Jeanrenaud designed his new mobile application.

The idea of ‘Nearby Glasses’ is exactly what you’d expect from the name. Your phone will send you a push notification if it detects someone nearby who might be wearing Smart Glasses and thus, possibly filming without your explicit permission.

Detect nearby Smart Glasses with this new app

News comes by way of Joseph Cox from 404 Media. Previously, the outlet covered how men were reportedly using Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses to film women inside massage parlors without consent.

Having read that story, Jeanrenaud got to work on his application. Recording others without consent is indeed against the law, and this app looks to alert you of any such illegal activity nearby.

The idea is that the app scans for Bluetooth data, specific signals sent out by certain device types. If it notices any of these signals within a relatively close range, you’ll get a ping, and then you can “act accordingly,” the app’s description reads.

Admittedly, however, “it’s still imperfect,” the creator told 404 Media. Signals can be mixed, as occasionally, VR headsets might be flagged instead of Smart Glasses, for instance. So to avoid any issues, the app advises users to “proceed with caution when approaching a person nearby wearing glasses. They might just be regular glasses, despite this app’s warning.”

“I consider it to be a tiny part of resistance against surveillance tech,” Jeanrenaud said. “This is a tech solution to a social problem exaggerated by tech.”

As for what might happen next, well, the creator isn’t to say. But he predicts users may “politely” tell any detected Smart Glasses wearers to “f*** off.”