Project Overview / Problem Statement:

Scammers almost always use the same tactics on multiple people and the victims are usually unaware of these techniques. Additionally, victims of fraud don’t have a centralized medium for speaking up about their experiences so FraudHub aims to unite a community of online users to be more aware of internet scammers. With the app, you can upload text, media, social media links or use filters to search and it will look through our database of known scams and posts submitted by victims for relevant matches. Users can also create posts explaining how they were scammed and look through our help resources for more information on what to do.

🔗 Links

• Video Demonstration
• Project Presentation
• Project Report

📌 Specifications

Android Mobile Application written in Java

• Minimum SDK: API 21, Android 5.0
• Recommended SDK: API 24, Android 7.0 and upwards
• 12 Classes, 8 .xml layouts

Design / Implementation:

1. Find Scam: Can use regular or advanced search and it returns a list of known scams matches that use that same text
2. Report Scam: Users can create posts to report their encounters with scammers. They can select scamType, medium, date and scamDescription.
3. Resources: A list of relevant resources to further promote online safety/assist users further

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lILuMHH_fe4

Challenges:

1. Performing and delivering relevant search results: how do I make sure the results are fine-tuned to what the user wants? → Implemented Algolia’s Full Text Search
2. Developing the initial database of scams. This app is intended to have user-generated data. But at the start where there are no users, how to collate relevant data? → Used Scam Search Database API

Takeaways: