Companies patent a number of technologies but not all of them come into fruition as a product. And that seems to be the case with a new patent by Apple, which feeds onlookers with false data when they try to peep at your phone, tablet or laptop screen.
Apple, on March 12, filed a new patent at the US Patent and Trademark Office titled ‘Gaze-dependent Display Encryption’. This tech will work on the basis of tracking user’s gaze while using Apple products such as iPhone, iPad or MacBook. By doing so, the screen will display the original data only in the region where the user stares at. Whereas, the other surrounding region will be encrypted in the form of displaying false data to make the content on the screen illegible to the people in the surrounding. What’s more interesting is the encrypted phony data will look similar to that of original content so that the onlookers don’t find it suspicious.
The Cupertino-based tech giant has always been a forerunner of privacy on its products. This is not the first time we are seeing someone trying a solution to this issue. A few years back, Blackberry-branded Android smartphones had a feature called ‘Privacy Shade’, which would hide the content on the screen completely except for a small movable window to let the user access the content. But, that was software-based and easy to implement. On the other hand, Apple’s patent requires a combination of hardware as well as software and therefore it is also hard to implement as there is literally no place on the front of the gadgets to include additional sensors.
Maybe, we might see this patent in action in some other way in near future or perhaps never at all.
