Camera glasses from Meta, Snap, and others continuously broadcast Bluetooth Low Energy advertisements — manufacturer-specific identifiers like 0x0D53 for Luxottica (Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta) and 0x03C2 for Snap Spectacles. ZuckOff, an independent iPhone app, passively listens for these signatures and alerts the user when camera-equipped eyewear is nearby. No data leaves the phone, no account is required, and the entire detection log is exportable as CSV. The mechanism is straightforward and honest about its limits. Glasses are loudest during power-on, pairing, and case-exit events. Most pairs continue advertising while worn, but some standalone models go silent. Signal strength gives rough distance, not direction. A detection is not proof of recording; silence is not proof of absence. The app surfaces the raw evidence behind every flag, letting users make their own judgment. This is a genuinely generative piece of infrastructure. Rather than lobbying for regulation or waiting for platform goodwill, ZuckOff weaponizes the Bluetooth specification itself — a protocol requirement that camera glasses manufacturers cannot easily circumvent without breaking device functionality. The app creates a new capability where none existed: ambient awareness of nearby recording hardware for anyone with a phone. The detection library currently covers Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta, Snap Spectacles, Meta Platforms Technologies wearables, and Oculus VR service UUIDs. Product-name matching (Spectacles, HeyCyan, VisionPro, VistaView) operates at lower confidence. The team is actively soliciting hardware loans and scan captures from owners of unlisted devices, and accepts funding through Suppi and Buy Me a Coffee to purchase additional test pairs. The app ships with background alerts, a Home Screen widget, Lock Screen Live Activity on iPhone, and Shortcuts/Siri integration for starting and stopping scans. Users who own camera glasses can whitelist their own devices. This is a thoughtful design choice — the tool distinguishes between "camera in the room" and "stranger's camera in the room." The obvious fragility is an arms race. Meta or Snap could randomize or suppress their Bluetooth advertising signatures in firmware updates, though doing so would break their own pairing and device-management workflows. A more subtle risk: as camera glasses proliferate, constant alerts could produce alarm fatigue, reducing the tool's practical value. The app's sustainability also depends on an indie developer keeping pace with every new hardware release. ZuckOff is a small, precise intervention that rebalances information asymmetry between the person wearing a camera and everyone else in the room. It does not solve the surveillance problem, but it converts a passive situation — you don't know you're being recorded — into an active one where you at least have a signal. That shift matters.
