This Android App Warns You When Smart Glasses Are Around

A new Android app called Nearby Glasses claims to warn people when camera‑equipped smart glasses are nearby. The open-source app was created by Yves Jeanrenaud, a Swiss sociologist and hobbyist developer, as a small act of resistance against wearable surveillance.

Nearby Glasses scans for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) broadcasts and looks for manufacturer identifiers linked to the companies behind smart glasses. When it detects a match, it issues a smartphone notification indicating that smart glasses are likely nearby, leaving it to the user to decide what to do next.

For now, the app can't tell whether the glasses are actually recording and cannot distinguish with certainty between smart glasses and other hardware from the same brands, so false positives should be expected, 404 Media reports.

Jeanrenaud published the source code on GitHub and distributes the app for free through the Google Play Store, without ads or tracking. The ...