Dilara was on her lunch break in the London store where she works when a tall man walked up to her and said: “I swear red hair means you’ve just been heartbroken.”

The man continued the conversation as they both got in a lift, and he asked Dilara for her phone number.

What Dilara did not realise was that the man was secretly filming her on his smart glasses – which look like normal eyewear but have a tiny camera which can record video.

The footage was then posted to TikTok, where it received 1.3m views. “I just wanted to cry,” Dilara, 21, told the BBC.

The man who filmed her, it turned out, had posted dozens of secretly filmed videos to TikTok, giving men tips on how to approach women.

Dilara also found out that her phone number was visible in the video. She then faced a wave of messages and calls.

Another woman, Kim, was filmed last summer on a beach in West Sussex, by a different man wearing smart sunglasses. He started a conversation by complimenting her on her bikini.

He asked where she lived and tried to connect with her on Instagram. Kim, 56, was unaware she was being filmed and, as they chatted, shared details about her employer and family.

Later, the man posted two videos online, under the guise of dating advice, which quickly amassed 6.9 million views on TikTok and more than 100,000 likes on Instagram.

The BBC has seen hundreds of similar short videos on TikTok and Instagram posted by dozens of different male influencers. The influencers claim to offer advice on how to pick up women and, in most cases, these videos appear to have been filmed secretly – using Meta smart glasses.

Many of the influencers, including the man who posted the video of Kim, gain income from the advice they offer to clients.

I first started looking into this issue after I discovered a YouTube video of me being approached and covertly filmed titled, “Picking up Cute Blonde in Leicester Square”. As I investigated, I discovered I was far from alone.

Dilara and Kim are among seven women in the UK, US and Australia, who have told the BBC they were filmed in this way. They all told us they had felt exploited and distressed after learning the videos had been posted online.

In the UK currently, there is no specific law against filming someone in public without consent, says privacy lawyer Jamie Hurworth – but “being in a public place doesn’t necessarily mean it’s ‘fair game’ to be filmed and then have that video uploaded online”.

After initially reporting the video to TikTok, Dilara was told by the tech firm that no violations had been found after a review. However, after being contacted by the BBC, TikTok later removed the video and, in a statement, said it would remove videos that have violated its community guidelines on “bullying and harassment”.

Kim asked the man who made the video to edit out information about her work and personal life from it, but he did not do that.

Manufacturers of smart glasses are “prioritising profit over women’s safety and wellbeing, and need to instigate safety measures”, says Rebecca Hitchen of the End Violence Against Women Coalition.

However, charities and experts warn that these videos may not fit into any specific category of content defined as unlawful by the UK’s Online Safety Act.

Dilara saw the video of her the next day when a friend sent it: “Your heart just drops, and you can’t do anything.”

Both Kim and Dilara say being filmed in this way felt like a “violation” and believe something needs to change.

Kim believes laws should be brought in to protect people from being filmed without their consent.

“Nobody’s got the right to film other people and exploit them and sexualise them, make money out of them without their permission,” she says.

The BBC reached out to the two men who filmed Kim and Dilara, but they did not respond. Both used Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses – the man who approached Dilara wore glasses with clear lenses, and the man who spoke to Kim wore sunglasses.

Such glasses are growing in popularity. Between October 2023 and February 2025, two million pairs were sold, according to the eyewear maker EssilorLuxottica.

Meta told the BBC its glasses have an LED light that activates whenever someone videos or photographs content.

The tech giant says this makes it clear to others when the device is recording, and features tamper-detection technology to prevent wearers from covering the light.

But the BBC has seen several videos online demonstrating how the light can be covered or completely disabled.

Neither Kim, Dilara or any of the women who have spoken to the BBC say they saw any sort of light to indicate the glasses used to film them were recording.

“If the videos were filmed using Meta AI glasses, which normally display a white light when recording,” says privacy lawyer Jamie Hurworth, “this raises concerns about whether that privacy feature is sufficient and if stronger safeguards are needed for such technology.”

Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls Jess Phillips said in a statement to the BBC: “Covert filming of women and girls is vile, and we will not let anyone profit from it.”

Because her phone number was visible in the video, Dilara says she was bombarded for weeks with “constant” phone calls and messages, sometimes in the middle of the night.

On one occasion, she says she picked up the phone and a man said to her: “Do you know how stupid you are? Do you regret it? Do you know how easy that made you look?”

Men have turned up at her place of work using the opening line from the viral video or asking for her social media details, she says.

As well as posting dozens of secretly shot videos on TikTok, the man who filmed her video has a community on Discord – a messaging platform popular with gamers – where he also posts advice and other videos.

After TikTok removed the video of Dilara, it told the BBC: “We have removed content for violating our Community Guidelines on bullying and harassment and have made other content ineligible for the For You Feed.”

The social media company told the BBC it does not allow content with personal information “that could lead to stalking, identity theft, fraud, or other harm”, highlighting a portal on its website where privacy concerns can be reported.

Kim says she only found out about her videos when her son phoned her at 05:00. He had received messages from friends saying “your mum’s gone viral”.

After being filmed on West Wittering beach last summer, Kim says she received thousands of messages from men. Some of the messages were sexual: “People saying ‘name your price to see your naked body'” or “do you have an OnlyFans?”

Six months later, she says she is still inundated with messages.

Kim did not think there was any point in asking the man who filmed her to remove the video because “it had too many views”.

She says she “felt totally disrespected”, when he refused to remove the section of video where she talked about her job.

“I was just a commodity, this piece of meat.”

Some influencers who make these videos also gain income from clients who pay for coaching and advice on approaching women.

If their content is popular enough, the influencers would also be eligible for payments from TikTok’s Creator Reward Program.

Privacy lawyer Jamie Hurworth says while filming someone in public is not against the law, “the law protects an individual’s right to a private life, and it can protect individuals in public places as well as private places”.

But Beatriz Kira, associate professor of law at the University of Sussex, says it is difficult for legislation to keep up with every “innovative and creative use of technology to harm women”. She suggests a more flexible approach to emerging technologies and online regulation in the UK.

Rebecca Hitchen, from the End Violence Against Women Coalition, says tech firms – like TikTok – should be “required to take proactive preventative action”.

Guidance regarding violence against women and girls’ from the media regulator, Ofcom, has to be taken seriously, she adds – and “must be made a mandatory code of practice with consequences for non-compliance”.

The women we have spoken to say being covertly filmed – and having the footage posted online – has left them questioning who they can be sure of.

“I was just being a friendly person,” says Kim. “So, it’s just a shame that trust is now broken.”

If you’ve been affected by the issues in this story, help and support is available via BBC Action Line