Privnoid keeps every seat but yours in the dark

Get your phone's privacy viewing profile: sharp head-on, dark from the seat next to you on the bus, in a line or at a cafe.

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Next, you confirm your phone model.

The bench, viewed from above

Profile on

Your seat: head-on, everything stays sharp and readable.

Privnoid notes

Newest entry first.

Entry 03New

Reading over a shoulder has a name

Watching someone's screen to see what is on it is called shoulder surfing. It happens close up, from the next seat or the next spot in a line, and that is how a PIN or a password gets seen in public.

From the Wikipedia article about shoulder surfing, read on the day this was written: Shoulder surfing (computer security)

Entry 02Note

Four places the next seat can read

On the bus, who is near enough to read?

  • Your chats sit right at their eye height.
  • A shared bench puts a stranger right at your elbow.
  • With the profile on, that elbow sees a dark screen.
Entry 01Fixed

How the side view goes dark

Your screen sends light out in all directions, so anyone at an angle can read it. Your privacy viewing profile keeps the light that comes straight to your eyes and dims what goes toward the sides. You read as usual; the person next to you sees a dark screen.

More detail

The profile holds two readings of your display: a side-angle dimming curve, which follows how the picture fades as the viewing angle moves off centre, and a direct-view clarity map, which shows where it remains sharp head-on.

A physical privacy filter does the same job with tiny slats inside a film, set like window blinds: light that travels straight passes between them, light leaving at a steep angle hits them. That is why such filters narrow the viewing angle and stop a screen from being read from the side.

A privacy filter under a microscope, its slats showing as dark vertical stripes
A privacy filter under a microscope: the dark stripes are the slats.

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