


The software, which was created by computer vision researcher Jan-Michael Frahm and Fabian Monrose from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is able to distinguish the letters being typed on a smartphone's keyboard from as far as 200 feet away with HD video footage captured from a DSLR. When using the camera on your average phone, that range drops to about ten feet instead. But it's still close enough to snoop without being detected.

iSpy takes advantage of one of the features that has made it easier to type on a touchscreen. Those magnified pop-up letters that show you which key was just pressed. The software analyzes footage of someone typing and identifies the letters being pressed by the location of those pop-ups on screen. When the pop-ups for neighboring letters overlap, the software makes an educated guess as to which one it was based on the context, and is claimed to be over ninety percent accurate. But simply turning your back from a suspected snoop might not be enough. While posing a significantly more difficult challenge, the software is even able to decode messages from a reflection in a window, or even someone's glasses. Which kind of makes those reflective privacy overlays seem a bit less like overkill now. [NewScientist via Ubergizmo]