Free App Tells You if Meta Glasses Are in the Room, Which Meta Says the Glasses Were Already Doing
The company has said the camera was designed to be noticed; the app's 5,000 downloads in a month suggest a second opinion.
WARSAW — A free app that uses Bluetooth fingerprints to warn users when a pair of camera-equipped smart glasses is nearby was downloaded more than 5,000 times in its first month, a figure Meta said Monday it found puzzling, because the glasses already have a light.
"Our glasses have a recording indicator," said a Meta spokesperson. "It is very noticeable. That is why so many people cover it with tape, which is a form of noticing."
The app cannot say whether the glasses are recording or who is wearing them. It reads signal strength and reports rough proximity, turning what its users describe as an invisible problem into a partially visible one.
"It said 'strong signal,'" said Ingrid Halvorsen, 34, who ran the app at a wedding. "I looked up. It was the groom."
Meta sold roughly seven million pairs of the glasses last year. In July the company announced an update that detects when the indicator light has been tampered with and disables the camera, a feature it said will protect the public from the seven million pairs sold before the feature existed.
The company's chief technology officer has said publicly that the camera was designed to be noticed by people nearby, a position the company maintains alongside marketing that describes the product as looking like ordinary glasses.
"Both are true," the spokesperson said. "It is designed to be noticed, and it is designed to look like it is not there. It is a very good design."
A coffee-shop owner in Krakow said he had mounted a tablet running the app beside the door. "It is the first time a device has warned me about a device," he said. "I put it next to the smoke detector. They get along."
At press time, the app had detected a pair of $2,195 Snap Spectacles, which nobody in the room had noticed for a different reason.