Smartphone users, beware! Hackers could use your mobile to find out what you are typing on a nearby computer at your workplace, say researchers.

A team at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US has claimed that a cell phone could be turned into a SpiPhone as it can decipher vibrations to record what is being typed on a nearby computer keyboard.

The researchers have, in fact, discovered how to do it using a smartphone accelerometer -- the internal device that detects when and how the phone is tilted. They have found it can be harnessed to sense keyboard vibrations and decipher complete sentences with up to 80 per cent accuracy.

"We first tried our experiments with an iPhone 3GS, and the results were difficult to read. But then we tried an iPhone 4, which has an added gyroscope to clean up the accelerometer noise, and the results were much better.

"We believe that most smartphones made in the past two years are sophisticated enough to launch this attack," the 'Daily Mail' newspaper quoted Patrick Traynor, who led the team, as saying.

The technique works by using mathematical software that detects pairs of keystrokes, rather than individual letters.

Hackers can then determine whether the pair of keys pressed is on the left or right side of the keyboard, and whether they are close together or far apart, say the researchers.