The smartglasses privacy situation just keeps getting worse

A man using smartglasses recorded a conversation with a woman without her consent and posted it online, where it was viewed more than 40,000 times, but that’s not the worst part of the latest problem affecting the tech.

Pay to take the content down

When the woman discovered the video and contacted the person who posted it, asking for it to be removed, the creator told her he would only do so if she paid. The email response was published by the BBC, but no figure was disclosed.

The content is believed to be another in the genre of “pick up artists,” where a man approaches a woman with the intention of using the situation to provide dating advice to other men.

The woman, referred to under the pseudonym of Alice in the BBC’s report, said she felt humiliated by the video, and had not given her consent for it to be recorded or posted online. She also says she didn’t even know she was being filmed in the first place, and she found out about the video when a friend sent it to her.

In the email, the unnamed man said his content “fully complies with the law and platform’s guidelines,” but if people preferred for content to be removed, he “usually offers the option of removal as a paid service.”

When the BBC contacted him, he refused an interview but said he wanted his content to feature “light-hearted, respectful interactions.” He denied requiring payment for removal, and that the wording of his email led to a misunderstanding.

Professor Clare McGlynn, a law researcher at Durham University in the UK, had a different viewpoint. She said the situation went beyond even “standard blackmail.”

A larger problem

The BBC report says it knows of another woman in the same situation. Meta apparently removed the video, as did TikTok, and the YouTube channel where content was also published is no longer active.

If the man was wearing the Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses, the camera can record for three minutes, and an LED indicator lets people know when the camera is working. However, there are ways to circumvent this, stopping people knowing when the camera is recording.

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It’s not the first time smartglasses have been used to record people without their consent, and privacy concerns — from covert recording to how videos are monitored by Meta — are a major barrier to wider acceptance of the technology.

When used responsibly, Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses are fun and useful, such as when using the camera for visual search, and the speakers for listening to podcasts while remaining aware of the world around you.

Companies such as Even Realities see cameras as a negative, and its smartglasses do not include the feature.