shoulder surfing

British  

noun

1. informal a form of credit-card fraud in which the perpetrator stands behind and looks over the shoulder of the victim as he or she withdraws money from an automated teller machine, memorizes the card details, and later steals the card

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Example Sentences

Mr. Waldron said that his team had identified several “agitators and provocateurs” who he said were “shoulder surfing” to capture information on attendees’ cell phones and laptops.

From Washington Times

Be sure you know your student's login credentials and do a little shoulder surfing to keep tabs on their progress.

From Fox News

“Passcodes aren’t as effective as biometrics, like fingerprint readers or facial recognition software, because people can do shoulder surfing to see your passcode and get into your phone” if they steal it.

From Washington Times

“Most often this is done by someone leaving a phone around and someone conducting what equates to shoulder surfing to watch the person enter their PIN or password, or watch them drawing their secret pattern in the case of some Android devices,” Jason Dion, a Udemy security instructor and certified ethical hacker, told Fox News.

From Fox News

Other people’s screens have changed the phenomenon of “shoulder surfing” — peeking over shoulders, often with malicious intent — or so a team of researchers at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich surmised.

From New York Times