ZuckOff: an app that spots camera glasses by their Bluetooth signature

Camera glasses such as Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta or Snap Spectacles announce themselves over Bluetooth — and that is the whole premise of ZuckOff. The app listens to the airwaves and tells you when such a device is near. According to its makers, nothing leaves your phone and there is no account.

How it works

ZuckOff flags glasses by the manufacturer signature they broadcast over Bluetooth. Its list includes Luxottica's identifier (Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta), the marker for Meta Platforms Technologies wearables, Snap's Spectacles signature and a service UUID registered to Oculus VR. It also recognises devices by product names — Spectacles, HeyCyan, VisionPro and others — though at lower confidence.

Every flag comes with its reasoning: the app shows the evidence behind each detection so you can disagree with it. It logs every Bluetooth device it hears, glasses or not, and lets you export the whole history as CSV. Own a pair? Mark it once and it stops raising alerts. On iPhone there are background notifications, a Home Screen widget and a Lock Screen Live Activity, and scans can be started from the Shortcuts app, Siri or an automation.

What it cannot do

The authors are candid about the limits. Glasses are loudest when they power on, pair or leave the case. Most models keep advertising while worn, so you can usually hear them, but a few standalone devices stay silent. Quiet is not proof that nobody is recording, and a detection is not proof that anyone is. Signal strength gives only a rough sense of distance and no direction.

Every rule in ZuckOff comes from a capture of a real device, and the team owns only a few pairs. So they ask for help: a short scan capture is usually enough, and they will take hardware on loan and send it back. The project runs on donations and merch sales, which fund the next pair to test.

ZuckOff is an independent app, not affiliated with Meta, Luxottica, Ray-Ban, Oakley or Snap.

Source: Hacker News