A new phone app called ZuckOff is trying to answer a question more people are asking in public, which is whether the person beside them is wearing camera glasses. It scans for the Bluetooth signals that Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta and Snap Spectacles give off, then tells you a pair is nearby and roughly how far away. It is free on iOS and Android, it comes from an independent developer, and it has no connection to Meta, Luxottica, Ray-Ban, Oakley or Snap.
A paid Pro tier adds alerts when the app isn’t open. Every detection rule in it comes from a capture of a real pair of glasses, which matters a lot for how far you can trust it, and I’ll get to that shortly.
My take is that ZuckOff is a clever and refreshingly honest stopgap, but the fact that anyone needed to build it says more about Meta’s glasses, and the privacy issues, than about the app.
How does ZuckOff detect smart glasses?
The ZuckOff app listens for the Bluetooth advertising packets that glasses broadcast and matches them against a catalogue of known signals. Those packets carry manufacturer codes and service identifiers, and ZuckOff looks for specific ones. I had been playing with this myself with a GeeekPi nRF52840 MDK USB Dongle. It’s amazing how much stuff you can sniff out when you think nothing is on.
For example, when you see the code 0x0D53 points to Luxottica, which covers Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta. The code 0x058E points to a Meta Platforms Technologies wearable, 0x03C2 points to Snap Spectacles, and the service identifier 0xFD5F is registered to Oculus VR. Product names such as Spectacles, HeyCyan, VisionPro and VistaView are also picked up, though at lower confidence.
The catch is that the catalogue is only as good as the hardware the developer has been able to get hold of. He says he owns only a few pairs, so he is asking anyone with camera glasses the app doesn’t list to email a short scan capture. He will also take hardware on loan and send it back once it has been recorded, and he is open to working with privacy groups. That is a sensible approach, but it does mean newer or obscure glasses may slip past.
What can’t the ZuckOff app tell you?
It can’t tell you whether anyone is recording, and the developer says so plainly. A detection is not proof that a camera is capturing anything, and a quiet scan is not proof that nobody is filming.
Glasses are loudest when they power on, pair or leave the case. Most pairs keep advertising while worn, so you can usually hear them, but a few standalone models stay silent. Signal strength gives a rough distance and no direction, so in a busy room you learn that a pair is somewhere close, not whose face it is on. That is a real limit, and it is the one to keep in mind before you go accusing a stranger of anything.
Why the recording light was never enough
Meta’s answer to bystander privacy has always been the small LED that lights up when the glasses capture photos or video. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which regulates Meta in the EU from Dublin, questioned whether that light gives people enough notice when the first Ray-Ban glasses launched here. If you ask me, it doesn’t despite the glasses themselves being an amazing piece of technology. Meta has since added tamper detection on newer glasses, so they should refuse to capture if the light has been covered.
That helps, but it still relies on you spotting a small light on someone’s face in whatever lighting you happen to be in. A Bluetooth scan doesn’t depend on that, which is exactly why an app like this has found an audience. That said, it is a workaround for a design problem. Phones already warn you when an unknown tracker is travelling with you, and a similar system built into the operating system for camera glasses would do the job far better than an app you have to remember to open.
Is ZuckOff worth installing?
Yes, if you regularly spend time somewhere filming worries you and you accept that it gives you a hint rather than an answer. The free version does the core job, and Pro only makes sense if you want background alerts. If you’re genuinely concerned and someone nearby is wearing camera glasses, asking them is still the surest way to find out.
The Goosed verdict
ZuckOff is a small, honest tool that does one job with clear limits, and I like that it doesn’t oversell itself. It won’t stop anyone being filmed and it won’t catch every pair, but it gives ordinary people a way to check something that Meta’s own hardware makes hard to check. If you own camera glasses the app doesn’t list, the developer would like to hear from you, and you can find the details on the ZuckOff smart glasses detection app page.
