Meta fixes distressingly obvious smart glasses recording LED loophole

You won’t believe how easy it was to bypass Meta privacy protections. Meta fixes distressingly obvious smart glasses recording LED loophole. Meta’s got a fix for clever smart glasses recording LED hack.

Wearables and health Meta fixes distressingly obvious smart glasses recording LED loophole You won’t believe how easy it was to bypass Meta privacy protections. It turns out this check was only performed when recordings were initiated, and users could just start filming and cover the LED afterwards. Meta is currently rolling out a fix to correct this behavior.

Retro gamers may remember the old PlayStation 1 swap trick: The system would only check disc integrity when first booting, so you could run imports or backups by first powering the PlayStation up with a legit disc in it, and then quickly swapping it out. It turns out that Meta’s smart glasses have been vulnerable to a similar attack, and the company is only just now getting around to patching it. Everybody’s concerned about smart glasses and privacy right now, and probably the biggest issue there is centered on surreptitious recording.

Even though we all carry around phones capable of sneakily recording videos, some folks are just really upset about the idea that someone could film them with smart glasses, and they’d never know it.

It’s the second update in less than two months to address privacy concerns. Meta is closing a loophole that allowed people to record with their smart glasses’ light covered.

Big Tech Meta Meta is closing a loophole that allowed people to record with their smart glasses’ light covered It’s the second update in less than two months to address privacy concerns. The company is rolling out a software update that closes one loophole that allowed people to bypass the LED by covering it up while a recording was in progress, according to Alex Himel, Meta’s VP of AR.

The seemingly simple loophole is one that has been repeatedly highlighted online in tutorials about how to bypass the light. "The camera won’t start recording if the LED is blocked, but some people try to bypass this by starting a recording and then covering it up," Himel wrote in a post on Threads.

"A fix for this is starting to roll out – the camera will now stop working if the light is covered during a recording." The change is the second time in less than two months that Meta has issued a software update to address privacy concerns and unwanted recording. The company announced last month that it would disable the cameras on glasses if it detected that people had physically damaged the recording light.

Meta has been trying to get ahead of a growing backlash against the product that has been fueled, in part, by people using the devices to covertly film and harass others in public. Instagram has also banned the accounts of some of the people behind these videos.