No, we’re not talking about your text messages. We’re talking about keystrokes on your actual keyboard. Welcome to the wonderful world of paranoia and technological creepiness.
Researchers at the University of Georgia and MIT, in between arguing over who has the lamer mascot, developed a technique where an iPhone, which minutely shakes on your desk as you tap keys, would detect the vibrations using its accelerometer and interpret them as keystrokes. Basically, it figures out how far away the vibrations are, runs a statistical analysis for letter pairs, and then runs the letter pairs against a dictionary.
What’s creepy is that it’s 80% accurate. Oh, and it can be attempted successfully with other smartphones as well. Fortunately, it only works when three inches or less away from your keyboard, so maybe consider keeping your fancy smartphone in your pants.