Tamper With The Recording LED & Meta’s Glasses Kill Camera

Every pair of Meta’s smart glasses carries a white light called the capture LED. It blinks briefly when the wearer takes a photo and keeps blinking for as long as they record, and it has no off switch — the point is that everyone nearby knows a camera is running. The trouble is that modders worked out how to defeat it, and some turned removing the LED into a paid service.

Meta is now pushing back on both fronts. In a recently published FAQ addressing the backlash against its devices, the company said its glasses automatically disable the camera when they detect the capture LED has been covered — a safeguard in place since the second generation of the hardware. The camera stays locked until the system detects the LED is unobstructed again.

Taping over the LED, though, was only the beginning. Meta admitted it has seen people “go beyond using tape to sophisticated efforts to modify or destroy the capture LED”. Its answer is a software update that disables the camera entirely if the system detects the LED has been physically tampered with or destroyed. Meta confirmed to Engadget that the update is mandatory and is currently rolling out.

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The company is also going after the businesses. Meta said it has been removing ads, posts, and Marketplace listings promoting LED-tampering services, and vowed to ban the accounts behind them — and to take legal action against those advertising such services, even when the ads appear off Meta’s own platforms.

The moves follow a rough stretch for the product line. The launch of Meta’s latest AI glasses intensified public anger over the devices, with critics raising concerns about privacy in general and about the glasses being used for all manner of unsavory purposes. The worries have been sharpened by the knowledge that the recording indicator could be switched off.