NEXT time you’re tapping off a private text message or sensitive email in a public place, consider this: someone could be reading every letter you type from up to 60 metres away.

“We can be in the second floor of a building and read a phone on the ground,” says computer vision researcher Jan-Michael Frahm, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Frahm and Fabian Monrose, also of UNC-Chapel Hill, have built a program, dubbed iSpy, that can identify text typed on a touchscreen from video footage of the screen or even its reflection in windows or sunglasses. Video from an ordinary mobile phone camera can be used to spy on a person from 3 metres away. And a snoop with a digital SLR camera that shoots HD video could read a screen up to 60 metres away.

Read the article in newscientist