Loving the sound on my boards more than ever, the PCB mounted one has a great deep sound, like a baritone voice, the plate mounted is a bass singer, I love both.
Right on! Along with their typing feel, speed, and looks, the great sound properties of MKs are what make them so charming to us. You could also worry that your partner's good looks make it more likely they'll cheat on you—but do you want to live that way? (And why did you bother finding a good-looking partner then?)
If you work in a setting where security is paramount, you have a lot more to worry about than how your KB sounds. Someone could point a laser at one of your windows and hear not only your keyboard, but anything you or anyone else in the room was saying, the numbers you were dialing on your phone, and so on. If you're in that kind of environment, I suppose you're already taking strenuous security measures. But to promote paranoia among rank-and-file MK enthusiasts—I think that'd be pretty sad.
The take-away from this is: don't use single English dictionary words as passwords. 5 characters? You gotta be kidding me.
I agree—some people would rather risk it all than do something inconvenient. (Consider how we're still damaging our planet for the sake of convenience, even though we've realized for decades what we were doing to it.)
But really, should it take something as esoteric as the threat of acoustic KB eavesdropping to motivate people to use secure p/w's?
It's most likely any system that does this would be trained with as standard a keyboard as possible so.. rubber dome. Which means most of us mech users are safe. Especially if you mod your switches. A good proportion of GH'ers will have boards that sound unique, due to the customisation possible (PCB mount, plate mount, plate material, case design, case material, keycap profile / material / thickness, orings / trampolines, MX / Alps / Topre, tactile / clicky / linear, etc...).
Oob, I don't think it's a matter of anyone being able to recognize a set of standard sounds that a particular
model of KB makes, if that's what you're saying.
My understanding is that computers are so fast now, and software so finely tuned, differences between the sounds of keys on
any keyboard can theoretically be used to determine which keys are pressed, once there's enough data and the principles of character-frequency are applied to it. And if anything, MKs are likely to make
more noise than RDs, of course.
Even if this becomes true on any real scale, though, it'll be of limited use if people take basic precautions. Want a password an acoustic eavesdropper can't analyze?:
1. Go to
Steve Gibson's Secure Password page.
2. Select and copy any number of random, uniquely generated characters.
3. Paste them into your p/w manager.
I refuse to live in fear, imagining that hackers are pointing laser beams at me. There's always
something you could worry about to the point of making yourself sick. IMHO, life's too short without making it even shorter.
