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Scientists use vibration detection to eavesdrop on smartphone conversations from up to 10 feet [1]
['Ellsworth Toohey']
Date: 2025-08-11
Penn State researchers have shown that phone conversations can be intercepted from up to 10 feet away by detecting tiny vibrations in smartphones using radar technology.
The team used a millimeter-wave radar sensor—the same type found in self-driving cars and motion detectors—to capture vibrations from a phone's earpiece during calls. By combining this with AI speech recognition software, they achieved 60% accuracy in transcribing conversations from a vocabulary of 10,000 words.
"When we talk on a cellphone, we tend to ignore the vibrations that come through the earpiece and cause the whole phone to vibrate," said Suryoday Basak, a Penn State doctoral candidate in computer science, as reported in the university's announcement. The researchers adapted an open-source AI model called Whisper to interpret these radar signals into text.
The study reveals significant privacy implications, as the technology could potentially be miniaturized to fit inside everyday objects like pens. While the current accuracy is limited, the researchers note that context clues can help piece together conversations—similar to lip reading, which only captures 30-40% of spoken words.
"The goal of our work was to explore whether these tools could potentially be used by bad actors to eavesdrop on phone conversations from a distance," Basak said. "Our findings suggest that this is technically feasible under certain conditions, and we hope this raises public awareness so people can be more mindful during sensitive calls."
Previously:
• Mobile Phone Museum has 2800 handsets, many of them quite bizarre
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