App keeps ‘shoulder surfers’ from spying your password

Researchers have created a smartphone application to combat “shoulder-surfing”—when someone else looks over your shoulder as you enter your phone’s password or other private digits, potentially even gleaning vital financial or personal information. … Nasir Memon, a professor of computer science and engineering at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, explains that the technology, called “IllusionPIN,” deploys a hybrid-image keyboard that appears one way to the close-up user and differently to an observer at a distance of three feet or greater.