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

Then pictures, then games, then — in the shoulder surfing tradition — “credentials,” or passwords, more specifically.

From New York Times • Oct. 10, 2018

In a world in which other people’s screens are virtually impossible to ignore, there were “no detailed investigations of shoulder surfing incidents and their real-world implications,” wrote the researchers in Munich.

From New York Times • Oct. 10, 2018

When Agler first learned Beard was surfing, he sent her an article about how, during the 1996 season, Chicago Bulls center Luc Longley separated his shoulder surfing near where Beard was hanging ten.

From New York Times • Sep. 28, 2017

But beyond random shoulder surfing and convenient-credit-card denial, we parents have a more potent range of options than we may be aware of.

From Time Magazine Archive