Are Those Smart Glasses Recording You? This Detector Helps You Find Out

When Google Glass first hit the streets 14 years ago, there was substantial backlash against it as a result of potential privacy violations. Glass was capable of recording via the built-in camera and people really didn’t like the idea of being in some stranger’s video without their knowledge. But the world has changed dramatically since then and nobody seems too concerned about the much better recording capabilities of today’s smart glasses. If, however, that does worry you, this app can help you detect nearby smart glasses.

Before we go further, I think it would be prudent to point out that this only tells you if there are devices nearby that might be smart glasses. False positives are possible and it doesn’t tell you if detected smart glasses are recording video. So, don’t use this app as a justification for vigilantism or something.

To understand how this app, simply called “Nearby Glasses,” works, grab your smartphone and open the Bluetooth connection settings. Search for devices to pair to and you’ll likely see a long list of many devices—most of which you won’t recognize. But that is only a partial list. If you download a Bluetooth sniffer app, like nRF Connect, you’ll get a much longer list.

That list represents every detectable Bluetooth device in range. Every device should have unique identifiers and some of those identifiers can be associated with models of smart glasses. Nearby Glasses simply notifies you if it detects any that have a strong enough RSSI to indicate that they’re close to your phone.

But again, this isn’t particularly reliable. There are many confounding factors and nothing broadcast by a Bluetooth device is unique and recognizable enough to be foolproof. And, of course, Nearby Glasses can only recognize identifiers it is aware of. If some new brand launches a new model, Nearby Glasses won’t know about it. For now, it seems to only know about Meta and Snapchat models.

Despite the inherent flaws, Nearby Glasses is interesting. It shows that people are still worried about privacy violations. That sentiment may even grow as people become aware of how recordings can be used for training AI and even for more nefarious purposes.

If that intrigues you and you want to experiment with detection, you can find Nearby Glasses on the Play Store for Android or explore the repository on GitHub.