I have come to suspect that this is an enticing rumour, but nothing more. When we travel, and see how easy it is to look at another’s screen (without being noticed), the thought that someone is doing this to us immediately comes to mind.

But consider what the odds are that:

1. we are working on something highly business-sensitive,
2. are doing so in an application that makes its screen contents easy-to-read (think 36pt typeface in a Powerpoint bullet),
3. are sitting in a seat that exposes the screen to someone sitting beside/behind us with a wide range of visibility (someone peeking through the gap in the seats typically only has 10-15 degrees of visual range and can only see a part of our document),
4. have a seatmate or cabinmate that can read, interpret, and understand our writing or our notes (including the all-important business meaning of the content [e.g. I work in entertainment law. I don't particularly care if an exec from a waste management firm reads subrogation clauses that I am vetting for my client], and
5. is in a position to capitalize directly or indirectly on the value of the contents of our work.

The combined probability of all of these consistently approaches zero.

Now I’m not saying you don’t find juicy things on other people’s screens when you fly. I’m saying that it’s very rare that you do find a juicy thing that you can understand and make money from.

Taking all this into consideration, try to imagine the business prospects of a company formed to try and harvest this information on a widespread basis. It’s next-to-nil.

Don’t take this to mean that corporate espionage doesn’t go on. I know it does. I’ve been party to cases where espionage was at the heart of trade secret violation. But espionage of this sort is very targeted. Someone is deliberately hired to follow a certain person or persons inconspicuously and glean information from this surreptitious shadowing.

So what do I do when I travel and have to work on my computer?

1. I use the 3M filters (they come with bezel-mount tabs that make it easy to slide in and out–no gook on my screens). They cut down the range of visibility so sharply that someone who is not directly in front of the screen has a very hard time seeing anything.
2. I almost always use the window seat and position my screen at an angle to my rear to deny visibility to nosy cabinmates sitting behind me. My pillows are in the seat gaps.
3. I usually sit at the rear of first- and business-class cabins (where the bulkhead assures me that no one sits behind me). If I’m in coach, I rarely work on sensitive work (far more people in coach walk up and down the cabin, or stand and stretch in the galley areas).

These are common-sense precautions for working in enclosed, yet semi-public spaces. I’m sure you do similar things.

My weekly routes are NYC-LA, NYC-SF, and the DC-NYC-BOS corridor, where I am in a plane at least three times a week.

I’m actually less worried about using my computer on the plane than I used to be when using paper and pen in the 70′s and 80′s. It was a lot harder to keep those contents safe from wandering eyes.