Oculus Quest users try to hack the headset to escape Facebook
Founder Palmer Luckey has offered a $5,000 bounty for anyone who can jailbreak the headset
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Oculus Quest users are attempting to hack the virtual reality headset in order to separate it from its parent company, Facebook.
Facebook, which purchased Oculus in 2014, had said that it would be tying use of the headset to a working Facebook account.
New users are now required to sign up with their Facebook account if they are using an Oculus headset for the first time, while existing users can merge their current Oculus account with their Facebook one.
“We will take steps to allow you to keep using content you have purchased, though we expect some games and apps may no longer work”, the company said.
However, shortly after the launch of the company’s new Oculus Quest 2 headset, the XR Safety Initiative (XRSI), a not-for-profit that “promotes privacy, security, and ethics in the immersive environments”, according to its website , said it found a jailbreak for the virtual reality device to separate it from Facebook.
“A researcher from the XR community has gained root access to Oculus Quest 2 and is able to bypass Facebook Login”, Kavya Pearlman, the CEO of XRSI, said in a post.
“XRSI’s own researchers have validated this jailbreak and are currently working to gather assurances to protect the individuals who discovered these methods of jailbreak”.
The group says that it is aware of many other researchers who have “gained similar access”.
Facebook is citing security and communication reasons for tying itself more closely to Oculus, claiming that having an “authentic identity” linked to users’ Oculus accounts will make it easier to offer “additional integrity tools”.
But it also means that Oculus users have been warned they could lose all purchases and account information if they ever delete their Facebook accounts, which led to criticism from virtual reality users, the Register reports.
As such, the right-to-repair organisation is not the only one looking for ways to bypass the restrictions set by Facebook.
Robert Long, a WebXR developer at Mozilla, offered up to $5,000 anyone capable jailbreaking the Quest 2.
“Let’s break free of FB’s anti-competitive, anti-privacy ecosystem”, Long tweeted.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has also made the same offer. Luckey “guarantee[d] that you won’t need to log into your Facebook account every time you wanna use the Oculus Rift" in a post on Reddit six years ago.
The Independent has reached out to XRSI, and Luckey for comment.
Facebook declined to comment.
The move comes as Facebook is also consolidating its other properties, such as linking Facebook Messenger and Instagram’s messaging platforms, and it is expected that WhatsApp will eventually also be integrated.
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