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Privatsphäre als Standard."],"People before profits":["Menschen sind uns wichtiger als Gewinne"],"Security through transparency":["Sicherheit durch Transparenz"],"The best Proton Mail ${ BLACK_FRIDAY } deals":["Die besten Proton Mail-Angebote zum ${ BLACK_FRIDAY }"],"The world’s only community- supported email service":["Der weltweit einzige von der Community unterstützte E-Mail-Dienst"]},"specialoffer:limited":{"${ hours } hour":["${ hours } Stunde","${ hours } Stunden"],"${ hoursLeft }, ${ minutesLeft } and ${ secondsLeft } left":["Nur noch ${ hoursLeft }, ${ minutesLeft } und ${ secondsLeft }"],"${ minutes } minute":["${ minutes } Minute","${ minutes } Minuten"],"${ seconds } second":["${ seconds } Sekunde","${ seconds } Sekunden"],"Limited time offer":["Zeitlich befristetes Angebot"]},"specialoffer:listitem":{"Create multiple addresses":["Erstelle mehrere Adressen"],"Hide-my-email aliases":["Hide-my-email-Aliase"],"Quickly unsubscribe from newsletters":["Newsletter schnell abbestellen"],"Use your own domain name":["Verwende deine eigene Domain"]},"specialoffer:logos":{"As featured in":["Vorgestellt in"]},"specialoffer:metadescription":{"Get an encrypted email that protects your privacy":["Nutze einen verschlüsselte E-Mail-Dienst, der deine Privatsphäre schützt"]},"specialoffer:metatitle":{"Proton Mail Black Friday Sale - Up to 40% off":["Proton Mail Black Friday-Angebot – Bis zu 40 % Rabatt"]},"specialoffer:newmetadescription":{"Get up to 40% off Proton Mail subscriptions this Black Friday. Find great deals on our secure end-to-end encrypted email plans.":["Erhalte an diesem Black Friday bis zu 40 % Rabatt auf Proton Mail-Abonnements. Mache tolle Schnäppchen bei unseren sicheren, Ende-zu-Ende-verschlüsselten E-Mail-Abonnements."]},"specialoffer:newmetatitle":{"Proton Mail Black Friday sale | Up to 40% off secure email":["Proton Mail-Black-Friday-Angebot | Bis zu 40 % Rabatt auf sichere E-Mails"]},"specialoffer:note":{"* Billed at ${ TOTAL_SUM } for the first year":["* Zum Preis von ${ TOTAL_SUM } im ersten Jahr"],"*Billed at ${ TOTAL_SUM } for the first 2 years":["*Zum Preis von ${ TOTAL_SUM } in den ersten zwei Jahren"],"30-day money-back guarantee":["30-tägige Geld-zurück-Garantie"],"Billed at ${ TOTAL_SUM } for the first 2 years":["Zum Preis von ${ TOTAL_SUM } in den ersten zwei Jahren"],"Billed at ${ TOTAL_SUM } for the first year":["Zum Preis von ${ TOTAL_SUM } im ersten Jahr"],"You save ${ SAVE_SUM }":["Du sparst ${ SAVE_SUM }"]},"specialoffer:off":{"${ PERCENT_OFF } off":["− ${ PERCENT_OFF }"]},"specialoffer:testimonial":{"I love my ProtonMail":["Ich liebe mein ProtonMail"],"My favorite email service":["Mein Lieblings-E-Mail-Dienst"],"Thanks Proton for keeping us all safe in the complicated internet universe.":["Danke Proton, dass du uns alle im komplizierten Internet-Universum beschützt."],"You get what you pay for. In the case of big tech, if you pay nothing, you get used. I quit using Gmail and switched to @ProtonMail":["Du bekommst, wofür du bezahlst. Wenn du nichts bezahlst, wirst du bei der Nutzung von Big Tech ausgenutzt. Ich habe Gmail aufgegeben und bin zu @ProtonMail gewechselt"]},"specialoffer:time":{"Days":["Tage"],"Hours":["Stunden"],"Min":["Min."]},"specialoffer:title":{"And much more":["Und vieles mehr"],"Safe from trackers":["Sicher vor Trackern"],"Stay organized":["Ordnung halten"],"Black Friday email deals":["E-Mail-Angebote zum Black Friday"],"Don’t just take our word for it":["Verlasse dich nicht nur auf unser Wort"],"Make your inbox yours":["Passe deinen Posteingang an"],"Our story":["Unsere Geschichte"],"Transfer your data from Google in one click":["Übertrage deine Daten von Google mit einem Klick"]},"specialoffer:tooltip":{"Access blocked content and browse privately. Includes ${ TOTAL_VPN_SERVERS }+ servers in ${ TOTAL_VPN_COUNTRIES }+ countries, connect up to 10 devices, access worldwide streaming services, malware and ad-blocker, and more.":["Greife auf blockierte Inhalte zu und surfe privat. Umfasst ${ TOTAL_VPN_SERVERS } Server in über ${ TOTAL_VPN_COUNTRIES } Ländern, die Verbindung \nvon bis zu 10 Geräten, weltweite Streaming-Dienste, Malware- und Werbeblocker und mehr."],"Easily share your calendar with your family, friends or colleagues, and view external calendars.":["Teile deinen Kalender ganz einfach mit Verwandten, Freunden oder Kollegen und rufe externe Kalender auf."],"Includes support for 1 custom email domain, 10 email addresses, 10 hide-my-email aliases, calendar sharing, and more.":["Beinhaltet Unterstützung für eine eigene E-Mail-Domain, 10 E-Mail-Adressen, 10 „hide-my-email“-Aliasse, Kalenderfreigabe und mehr."],"Includes support for 3 custom email domains, 15 email addresses, unlimited hide-my-email aliases, calendar sharing, and more.":["Beinhaltet Unterstützung für 3 benutzerdefinierte E-Mail-Domänen, 15 E-Mail-Adressen, unbegrenzte „hide-my-email“-Aliase, Kalenderfreigabe und mehr."],"Manage up to 25 calendars, mobile apps, secured with end-to-end encryption, 1-click calendar import from Google, and more.":["Verwalte bis zu 25 Kalender, Ende zu Ende verschlüsselte mobile Apps, 1-Klick-Kalenderimporte von Google und vieles mehr."]},"Status Banner":{"At the moment we are experiencing issues with the Proton VPN service":["Im Moment gibt es Probleme mit dem Proton VPN-Dienst"]},"Status banner":{"Learn more":["Mehr erfahren"],"Please note that at the moment we are experiencing issues with the ${ issues[0] } service.":["Bitte beachte, dass wir im Moment Probleme mit dem Dienst ${ issues[0] } haben."],"We are experiencing issues with one or more services at the moment.":["Im Moment gibt es Probleme mit einem oder mehreren Diensten."]},"steps":{"Step":["Schritt"]},"suggestions":{"Suggestions":["Vorschläge"]},"Support":{"Sub category":["Unterkategorie","Unterkategorien"]},"Support article":{"${ readingTime } min":["${ readingTime } Min.","${ readingTime } Min."],"Category":["Kategorie","Kategorien"],"Didn’t find what you were looking for?":["Hast du nicht gefunden, wonach du gesucht hast?"],"General contact":["Allgemeiner Kontakt"],"Get help":["Hilfe erhalten"],"Legal contact":["Kontakt für Rechtliches"],"Media contact":["Kontakt für Medien"],"Partnerships contact":["Kontakt für Partnerschaften"],"Reading":["Lesen"]},"Support Form Platform option":{"VPN for Android TV":["VPN für Android TV"],"VPN for Apple TV":["VPN für Apple TV"],"VPN for Chromebook":["VPN für Chromebook"]},"Support troubleshooting":{"App version":["App-Version"],"Browser":["Browser"],"Check if this helps":["Schau, ob das hilft."],"Choose a product":["Produkt auswählen"],"Did this solve your issue?":["Hat dies dein Problem gelöst?"],"Faster assistance is just a few clicks away":["Schnellere Hilfe ist nur ein paar Klicks entfernt"],"How can we help?":["Wie können wir dir helfen?"],"No, contact support":["Nein, Support kontaktieren"],"Please fill out one field after another":["Bitte fülle ein Feld nach dem anderen aus"],"Please make your selections":["Bitte triff deine Auswahl"],"Proton account":["Proton-Konto"],"Proton for Business":["Proton for Business"],"Thank you for your feedback":["Danke für dein Feedback"],"What can we help with?":["Wobei können wir dir helfen?"],"Yes":["Ja"]},"support_modal_search_query":{"Search query":["Anfrage suchen"]},"support_search_button":{"Search":["Suchen"]},"support_search_i_am_looking_for":{"I'm looking for":["Ich suche"]},"SupportForm":{"For a faster resolution, please report the issue from the Bridge app: Help > Report a problem.":["Damit das Problem schneller gelöst werden kann, melde es bitte über die Bridge-App: Help > Report a problem (Hilfe > Problem melden)."],"Information":["Informationen"]},"SupportForm:option":{"Account Security":["Kontosicherheit"],"Contacts":["Kontakte"],"Custom email domain":["Benutzerdefinierte E-Mail-Domain"],"Email delivery and Spam":["E-Mail-Zustellung und Spam"],"Encryption":["Verschlüsselung"],"Login and password":["Anmeldung und Passwort"],"Merge aliases and accounts":["Zusammenführung von Aliassen und Konten"],"Migrate to Proton":["Migration zu Proton"],"Notifications":["Benachrichtigungen"],"Other":["Sonstiges"],"Plans and billing":["Abonnements und Abrechnung"],"Proton for Business":["Proton for Business"],"Sign up":["Registrierung"],"Storage":["Speicher"],"Users, addresses, and identities":["Benutzer, Adressen und Identitäten"]},"SupportForm:optionIntro":{"Select a topic":["Thema auswählen"]},"Testimonial":{"Awards":["Auszeichnungen"],"Customers":["Kunden"],"Featured":["Empfohlen"],"Go to testimonial source":["Zur Referenzquelle wechseln"],"Open source of award":["Quelle der Auszeichnung öffnen"],"Open source of quote":["Quelle des Zitats öffnen"],"Reviews":["Bewertungen"],"Videos":["Videos"],"Watch on TikTok":["Auf TikTok ansehen"],"Watch on YouTube":["Auf YouTube 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Includes ${ TOTAL_VPN_SERVERS }+ servers in ${ TOTAL_VPN_COUNTRIES }+ countries, highest VPN speed, ${ TOTAL_VPN_CONNECTIONS } VPN connections, worldwide streaming services, malware and ad-blocker, and more.":["Greife auf blockierte Inhalte zu und surfe privat. 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Meta’s smart glasses open door to new levels of facial surveillance | Proton
Two Harvard undergrads invented a way to instantly find your home address, phone number, and even your relatives — simply by looking at you.
They built this facial surveillance machine, which they call I-XRAY(neues Fenster), using nothing more than off-the-shelf Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and publicly available LLMs, databases, and facial search engines.
The students, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, didn’t release the code because their purpose for this project is to highlight how today’s internet, awash with data, has put us on the edge of a world where complete strangers can find your identity and personal information in an instant according to 404 Media(neues Fenster), the outlet that initially reported the story.
Their DIY surveillance kit demonstrates how quickly the battlelines can shift in the fight for privacy. But it’s not too late to protect yourself from facial surveillance. Below, we examine what these smart glasses can do, how they work, and what you can do to prevent people from violating your privacy.
Doxxing people in real time
Nguyen shared a video on X showing just how quickly and easily you can find sensitive, personal information using their modified glasses. Just a few seconds after seeing someone, they know where they’ve worked, what they’ve published, and where they went to school.
Their system uses the Meta smart glasses’ ability to live stream to Instagram. They created a program that monitors the feed and uses AI to detect faces. Those faces are then fed into PimEyes, a face search and reverse image search engine, to find the person’s name and other images of them. Once the name is found, I-XRAY uses AI to feed the name into dozens of publicly available data sources, like voter registration databases, to find other sensitive information. This is all compiled and displayed in an app on their phone.
The most concerning part of I-XRAY is that it was created simply by patching together hardware, software, and databases that are already available to anyone.
And while Nguyen and Ardayfio could have used any camera that can live stream to Instagram (a smartphone, for example), Meta’s smart glasses make it easy to record people without their knowledge. Technically, a “privacy light” turns on when you’re using video to inform people that they’re being recorded, but it’s easy to overlook. If you walk through a crowd and use your smart glasses to record their faces, most people will simply assume you’re wearing a normal pair of sunglasses.
In Nguyen’s video, you can watch them walk up to strangers and convincingly reference their work. These people had no idea they were being recorded or doxxed, showing how easy it would be to use these glasses for social engineering.
The slippery slope toward facial surveillance
While I-XRAY is the most impressive demonstration of how smart devices can be used to track and dox people, the risks have been well-known for years. Both Google and Facebook (now Meta) decided against including facial recognition features(neues Fenster) in their products due to privacy concerns in 2017, writes Kashmir Hill in her book on PimEyes and Clearview AI, Your Face Belongs to Us. But organizations like Clearview AI(neues Fenster) and PimEyes pushed forward with facial recognition, scraping billions of images from the internet without anyone’s permission.
PimEyes is arguably the key to I-XRAY. It’s a publicly available facial recognition service that’s been used to identify January 6 rioters(neues Fenster) and dox people on TikTok(neues Fenster). All you need to do is upload an image of someone, and PimEyes will provide a list of images of matching faces along with the URLs of where those images came from. In Nugyen’s video, you can see the shock on people’s faces when they find their kindergarten photos on the I-XRAY app.
Using I-XRAY, if someone can get a decent photo of your face (in other words, if you step into a public area), it’s relatively easy for them to find all sorts of sensitive information on you.
Despite their worries about facial recognition seven years ago, Meta officials didn’t seem eager to prevent users from creating spyware from scratch. When 404 Media asked Meta for a comment on I-XRAY, its spokesperson simply referred them to the terms of service for Facebook View(neues Fenster) (the app that comes with the smart glasses), which states, “You are also responsible for using Facebook View in a safe, lawful, and respectful manner” — tantamount to a shoulder shrug.
You must protect your privacy – no one else will
As we’ve repeatedly seen, people are left to fend for themselves when it comes to protecting their privacy. Fortunately, Nguyen and Ardayfio list some steps you can take to protect yourself from this type of facial surveillance. This mostly involves going to multiple databases, data brokers, and face search engines and requesting that they remove your data.
Remove your information from face search engines
This most important place to start if you want to prevent doxxing attacks using smart glasses is removing yourself from face search engines. If you can remove yourself from PimEyes(neues Fenster) and Facecheck ID(neues Fenster), you’ll make it much harder for attackers to get your name if they only have a photo of you.
Remove your information from public people search engines
If someone has your name, they can use these search engines to find all kinds of sensitive information, including your home addresses (past and present), phone numbers (past and present), job history, and more. Some of the largest people search engines include:
Push politicians for meaningful data privacy controls
While this process can make a big difference when it comes to your online privacy, it’s not a sustainable or comprehensive solution. That would require lawmakers to pass legislation that strengthens people’s data privacy protections.
The internet is awash in data, from Big Tech to data brokers. In this age of internet-connected devices, it’s somewhat shocking it took this long for someone to create I-XRAY. Nguyen and Ardayfio have shown that now people can create tools that tap into the surveillance network that governments and Big Tech have used for years.
Removing your data from data brokers is an important step, but preventing as much of your data as possible from ever being collected is an even better one. While it’s difficult to prevent data brokers from getting much of your data (they often compile publicly available information or buy it from service providers, like phone companies), every bit of data you can keep private makes a difference.
Once data reaches the internet, it’s hard to control where it ends up or who can access it. As we’ve seen, China has hacked dozens of databases. The US government has outsourced much of its mass surveillance to Big Tech and will buy data from data brokers to avoid needing to get warrants (this is one reason lawmakers might be hesitant to pass privacy reforms).
This is why we began Proton. The best way to prevent these abuses, from I-XRAY all the way up to the US government’s warrantless surveillance program, is to simply minimize data collection at every step. It’s why we built an entire suite of services that encrypt your data so you’re in control of who can access it.
Proton Calendar keeps your schedule private with end-to-end encryption and customizable event management features.
Proton Drive provides secure cloud storage with end-to-end encryption, allowing for encrypted file sharing to protect sensitive documents, including identity papers and personal photos, from data breaches and surveillance.
Proton Mail offers encrypted email services with zero-access encryption, protection against tracking, and phishing prevention, ensuring private communication.
Proton Pass, our password manager, creates strong passwords, supports two-factor authentication, and offers email aliasing to enhance security against cyber threats.
Proton VPN(neues Fenster) encrypts your internet traffic, follows a strict no-logs policy, and blocks ads, trackers, and malware, ensuring safe and private browsing.
We’re building a better internet where privacy is the default. Join us as we empty the databases of personal information that fuel today’s surveillance tools.
Thousands of businesses of all sizes were impacted by cybercrime in 2024. Here
are the top cybersecurity threats we expect companies to face in 2025—and how
Proton Pass can protect your business.