I first saw Google Glass Intenet-connected eyewear demonstrated at a conference over a year ago and was impressed with the technology.
But as someone who wears trifocals, I thought it’s potential was limited — would you want to be in a car driven by someone who could be reading Web pages, even if both hands are on the wheels?
It didn’t occur to me that like anything connected to the Internet someone would want to create malware to exploit it. This week researchers at a California university created proof-of-concept spyware that uses the device’s camera to quietly snap shots when the display is off.
As a story in Forbes points out, Google’s developer terms of service bans apps from using the camera when the display is powered down. But the researchers discovered there’s nothing to prevent it.
It likely wouldn’t make it to the Google App store.
Fortunately Glass is still under development and hasn’t yet been commercially released. But, like third party malware apps available for Android smart phones, this is a reminder that for mobile devices security is at least important as functionality.