How to Lose Money with Mobile Banking

The 40 Meter Theft

Joseph Ricci

        Filling up a gas tank, getting dressed, and getting your online banking password decoded all have something in common. They only take 5 minutes. What are the effects of this? If you plan on using online banking, there is only one safe route. That is to not use online banking. The risk that someone can look over your shoulder and see an ATM pin number or an online password has always been known. Adults often use their free hand to block others view from their keypads. In todays world where we are surrounded by technology this is no longer an effective method. Next time you are in public, take a look around. Every laptop, smartphone, flip phone, and even smart watches have cameras that can be watching from any angle.

        During his presentation, Professor Fu gave us an example of how easy it is to be a clueless victim of password theft. At Umass Lowell, Dr.Fu set up an experiment where he set up a camera on the third floor of a hall and captured someone typing from across the street on a sidewalk, a total of 40 meters. Using the software available to view someone’s hand movements and estimate what they were typing, he tried to decode what the person 40 meters away was typing into their phone. Dr. Fu’s experiment had a 100% success rate. Using multiple other methods from 8 feet away proved to all have over 90% success rates. One of these methods calculates the velocity of your fingers to decipher what letters or numbers were pressed. So this presented the question, should I ever feel comfortable putting my information online? The short answer is no but Professor Fu has a solution. If you can buy a non-apple smartphone, you can purchase an app that will scramble the keys on your keyboard so that someone using photograph cannot decipher the keys you press by analyzing your finger movements. Hopefully the computer science engineers of today’s generation can continue to produce new and improved versions of Dr.Fu’s latest technologies.