Protect Your Computer, Protect Your Identity

Reported February 2010

HUNT VALLEY, Md. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- If you work in an office, a cubicle, a coffee shop, or in an airport, privacy and your computer is a big deal, especially when working with confidential documents. Now there's a new way to protect your PC's privacy.

We all work hard, but that doesn't always mean working at a desk behind closed doors.

"I'm on the road a lot," Mark Komisky told Ivanhoe. "I'm in coffee shops. I'm in airports."

Working off-site has its advantages for Komisky, but logging-on in public can put his privacy at risk.

"I'm often looking at a lot of very sensitive data," Komisky said.

Protecting your privacy can be difficult in places where colleagues interact, visitors stroll, and unfamiliar eyes are a quick glance away from peering at your screen. Now, a new technology called private eye protects your screen from prying eyes.

"We built Private Eye to reduce the opportunities for eavesdroppers to look at what's on your display," Bill Anderson, Ph.D., a cryptographer and CEO of Oculis Labs in Hunt Valley, Md., explained.

Private Eye is a software program that uses a webcam to react to the user's face, allowing only the user to view the screen. The moment the user looks away, the screen is blurred. When the user looks back, the screen is instantly readable again.

"We look for eyes and nose and mouth and ears, and determine very roughly which direction the face is pointing," Dr. Anderson said.

The program uses bio-metrics to determine the unique characteristics of a person's face, measuring the distance between the eyes, nose, mouth and ears -- the uniqueness of the users face is stored to allow only that face to view the screen.

"That's a fairly unique fingerprint for individuals," Dr. Anderson said.

The technology also catches if someone creeps up behind the user. The face of a person looking over the user's shoulder is displayed in a video thumbnail on the screen, catching would-be eavesdroppers in their tracks.

Private Eye costs $20 and can be purchased online at http://www.oculislabs.com. There's also a high-end product available called chameleon that is for military and government security uses. To anyone else looking at the screen, they see a constant changing jumble of text. To the user, the screen is normal.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.-USA, contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Bill Anderson, CEO
Oculis Labs, Inc.
338 Clubhouse Rd.
Hunt Valley, MD, 21031
(410) 209 7123
bill@oculislabs.com

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
IEEE
Pender McCarter
IEEE http://www.ieee.org
IEEE-USA http://www.ieeeusa.org
p.mccarter@ieee.org

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