(Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
Meta is again updating its smart glasses software to stop people from circumventing the privacy controlsThe camera won't film if you start filming and then block the LEDThere's also a marketing campaign that's designed to educate consumersSentiment around smart glasses that can capture photos and video is quickly turning, and not in the direction chief smart glasses purveyor Meta would prefer. Now, to stop the admittedly small percentage of users who are trying to circumvent the glasses' built-in protections for nefarious filming, Meta is introducing a new slipstream technology update that's coming to Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses as we speak.In a post on Threads, Meta's VP of Wearables Alex Himel announced a software update that will make it impossible for wearers to film or capture pictures if the glasses detect that you're covering the LED.That LED was always designed to signal to others not wearing the glasses that you were filming them, but hackers soon figured out how to disable it. Meta quickly made it so the system could detect that. Now, it seems they've noticed another workaround that this update will quickly squelch. If you, say, start filming and then somehow cover the LED to hide the signal that you're doing so, the system will stop recording.Here's how Himel explained it in his post:"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. A fix for this is starting to roll out - the camera will now stop working if the light is covered during a recording."Perhaps more importantly, Himel is aware that hackers probably won't give up trying to jailbreak the wearable cameras and promises. "We’re going to keep rolling out updates like this to make sure the capture LED can reliably alert bystanders when photos or videos are being captured for someone’s gallery."
