A few weeks ago, Meta announced the ability to use its new Ray-Ban Meta glasses to get information about your surroundings. Innocent things, like identifying flowers.
Well, two Harvard students just revealed how easy it is to turn these new smart glasses into a privacy nightmare.
Here’s what happened: students Anhphu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio cooked up an app called I-XRAY that turns these Ray-Bans into a doxxing machine. We're talking name, address, phone number—all from looking at someone with the glasses.
Here's how it works:
The Ray-Bans can record up to three minutes of video, with a privacy light that's about as noticeable as a firefly in broad daylight.
This video is streamed to Instagram, where an AI monitors the feed.
I-XRAY uses PimEyes (a facial recognition tool) to match these faces to public images, then unleashes AI to dig up personal details from public databases.
Their demo had strangers freaking out when they realized how easily identifiable they were from public online info.
How to Remove Your Information
Fortunately, it is possible to erase yourself from data sources like Pimeyes and FastPeopleSearch, so this technology immediately becomes ineffective. We are outlining the steps below so that you and those you care about can protect themselves.
Removal from Reverse Face Search Engines:
The major, most accurate reverse face search engines, Pimeyes and Facecheck.id, offer free services to remove yourself.
Removal from People Search Engines
Most people don’t realize that from just a name, one can often identify the person’s home address, phone number, and relatives’ names. We collected the opt out links to major people search engines below:
Preventing Identity Theft from SSN data dump leaks
Most of the damage that can be done with an SSN are financial. The main way to protect yourself is adding 2FA to important logins and freezing your credit below:
Extensive list of data broker removal services
