EyeSpot: leveraging gaze to protect private text content on mobile devices from shoulder surfing

Khamis, M. , Eiband, M., Zürn, M. and Hussmann, H. (2018) EyeSpot: leveraging gaze to protect private text content on mobile devices from shoulder surfing. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 2(3), 45. (doi: 10.3390/mti2030045)

Abstract

As mobile devices allow access to an increasing amount of private data, using them in public can potentially leak sensitive information through shoulder surfing. This includes personal private data (e.g., in chat conversations) and business-related content (e.g., in emails). Leaking the former might infringe on users’ privacy, while leaking the latter is considered a breach of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation as of May 2018. This creates a need for systems that protect sensitive data in public. We introduce EyeSpot, a technique that displays content through a spot that follows the user’s gaze while hiding the rest of the screen from an observer’s view through overlaid masks. We explore different configurations for EyeSpot in a user study in terms of users’ reading speed, text comprehension, and perceived workload. While our system is a proof of concept, we identify crystallized masks as a promising design candidate for further evaluation with regard to the security of the system in a shoulder surfing scenario.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Khamis, Dr Mohamed
• Authors: Khamis, M., Eiband, M., Zürn, M., and Hussmann, H.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Journal Name: Multimodal Technologies and Interaction
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2414-4088
• ISSN (Online): 2414-4088
• Published Online: 09 August 2018
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2018 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 2(3): 45
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License