By now it’s highly likely that the camera in your smartphone has become the primary (or even only) way that you take pictures. Today’s advanced smartphone camera setups are capable of much more than snapping scenery or selfies, though. Did you know they can reveal the location of hidden spy cameras?
Image:
getty
This new ability is thanks to the addition of a time-of-flight (ToF) sensor to many new models. The sensor helps a smartphone analyze depth information about a scene that’s being photographed.
It does that by beaming out a laser. The laser bounces off objects and then returns to the sensor, and the phone can then analyze the data that’s been gathered and use it to optimize camera settings.
A team of researchers discovered that the laser from the ToF sensor can do more than produce better-looking pictures. It turns out that the intense beam causes abnormal reflections when it hits something like the lens of a camera.
The custom app the researchers developed is able to detect hidden cameras with a success rate near 90%. You’d only be about half that effective if you scanned a room for cameras visually. Commercial detection devices are better, but at about 60% their detection rate is still well below what the research team achieved.
The smartphone and app solution is also very good at avoiding false positives. It’s about half as likely to misreport finding a camera compared to a commercial detection device.
OK, this all sounds very cool... like something out of a spy thriller. But why would the average smartphone user ever need to do this, you ask?
While they may have been a rarity in the past, hidden cameras are far more common these days. There have been numerous complaints by AirBNB users over the last several years, for examples, about finding spy cameras in their rentals.
Cameras can be hidden in everything from teddy bears to alarm clocks to USB chargers. Even if you know what you’re looking for they can be incredibly hard to spot.
If launching an app on your phone was all it took to have a little extra peace of mind that your private accomodations were genuinely private, wouldn’t it be worth installing?