John works as a Programmer for We-are-secure Inc. On one of his routine visits to the company, he noted down the passwords of the employees while they were typing them on their computer screens…

Shoulder surfing involves visually observing a victim's screen or keyboard to capture sensitive information such as passwords or PINs without the use of any technical tools, which is exactly what John did by watching employees type their credentials.

Important user posing, also called impersonation, involves pretending to be an authorized or privileged person to gain access or information, which John did not do.

Dumpster diving involves physically searching through discarded materials such as printed documents or storage media to find sensitive information, not observing live screen activity.

Authorization by third party is not a recognized standard social engineering attack technique and does not describe the act of visually capturing credentials.