The Interplay between Personal Relationships \& Shoulder Surfing Mitigation

Abstract

Shoulder surfing refers to observing someone’s device screen without their consent. Conspicuously switching off the screen upon noticing a friend observing private messages may create an embarrassing situation. Initial evidence indicates that users adopt strategies to mitigate shoulder surfing based on their relationship to the observer. However, the social implications of such mitigation strategies remain largely unexplored. We present findings from an interview study with 12 participants to address this. We analyze experiences with shoulder surfers of different relationships to the user and collect feedback on eleven state-of-the-arts strategies for mitigating shoulder surfing. We show that the user-observer relationship impacts the choice of mitigation methods and that users often do not want observers to know they were caught. Based on our results, we conclude with implications for designing socially acceptable privacy protection mechanisms on mobile devices.