Was debating about recommending this as a tool but I searched and I didn’t find a topic about this so I thought this was really neat.
Zuckoff works by detecting the Bluetooth signal from compatible Meta glasses. It can tell you when a pair of glasses is nearby, and roughly how far away they are.
There is an important limitation, though, the app cannot tell whether the person is actually recording. It only tells you that camera-equipped glasses are nearby.
Camera glasses announce themselves over Bluetooth. ZuckOff listens for that and tells you when Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta, Snap Spectacles or similar hardware is nearby. Nothing leaves your phone and there is no account.
Flags camera glasses by their manufacturer signature
Shows the evidence behind every flag, so you can disagree with it
Logs every Bluetooth device it hears, glasses or not
Own a pair? Mark them once and they stop raising alerts
Background alerts, a Home Screen widget, and a Lock Screen Live Activity on iPhone
Start and stop a scan from the Shortcuts app, Siri or an automation
Export the whole log as CSV whenever you want it
This seems to have more potential for surveillance than I’d like for an app that’s supposed to be anti-surveillance. Also
Own a pair? Mark them once and they stop raising alerts
“If you want to use this app to help protect you from the very thing you’re doing to everyone around you without their consent, we’ve made it easy.”
One downside I see is that to use this, you need to have Bluetooth on, which trades one form of identifiable tracking for another. As I understand it, Bluetooth MAC addresses can’t be randomized in all cases.
It mostly just collects Bluetooth identifiers which is of course necessary for the app to work. It all stays on device so it seems pretty private to me.
Probably the dev added this since they surely have a pair themselves for testing /developing the app
I don’t think it’s that bad, but someone could use the app to log and track all bluetooth devices that come within a vicinity. It’s unlikely that a person will have the app used on them in this way, but not impossible. It’s just a bit of an eyebrow raiser.
This feature doesn’t seem necessary for that. It seems like they could just buy a pair for a particular brand, or perhaps multiple pairs, test it at home, then test the app out in the field without bringing that pair.
To be fair, if this data never leaves the device (it’d be funny if it was secretly just Meta’s way of mapping out where they’re used) then I don’t see too much of an issue. Anything can sit and sniff bluetooth signals - it’s if they’re uploading this mapping somewhere that it becomes much of a privacy concern IMO.
Sounds good, a way to know who to avoid, or who to call a glasshole, depending how brave one is.
