“Shoulder surfers” – people peering that your device’s display over your shoulder unbidden – are a real problem that leads to hacking, stolen information, and even identity theft. Privacy champion Apple is exploring way to prevent it.
Sarah Bregel for Fast Company:
Apple has improved screens in just about every imaginable way already. However, most of those fixes make our scenes easier to view—not harder. Now, the company might be working on a solution that will leave shoulder surfers struggling for a solid view.
[T]wo new patents acquired by Apple aim to solve the problem. The first, called “Privacy films for curved displays,” proposes putting a covering on the screen, which only allows light to emanate in one direction. Therefore, only the person right in front of the screen can view it clearly. The other patent, for flat screens, is called “Displays with adjustable angles of view.” It proposes altering the viewing angle of the display while in use, which would act as a filter, letting the user be in control of how polarized the screen is. The patent also describes the use of a liquid crystal element that only allows certain colors to be seen when not viewing the screen head-on.
While we might not always be aware of it, shoulder surfing is rampant. In a 2016 NYU study, 73% of survey respondents shared that they had seen someone’s confidential PIN without that person realizing it.
MacDailyNews Take: Such technology would be a boon to city dwellers, travelers, bar patrons, etc.
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
Generally the ‘simple’ solutions would be to reduce the viewable angle via security screen protectors or create a display that can only be properly viewed with polarized lenses.
Doesn’t Apple Vision Pro already solve this issue?
While the Apple Vision Pro does prevent “shoulder surfing”, owning one does nothing to prevent it from happening on any other Mac or iOS device the user may own. Did you mean you imagine Apple no longer selling Mac displays, and iOS devices excepting the Vision Pro?