BitShift

Inspiration

Financial frauds are becoming increasingly prevalent, posing a threat to both individuals and businesses. Current anti-scam strategies face challenges due to gaps in public awareness, legal limitations, and the constant evolution of scam tactics. SafeSG aims to address these challenges by implementing a comprehensive solution to combat bank scams effectively.

What it does

SafeSG is a cutting-edge community-driven platform designed to combat the rising threat of scams and phishing attempts, particularly targeting vulnerable populations such as the elderly. With an intuitive interface and powerful backend, SafeSG empowers users to report and verify suspicious activities, receive real-time alerts, access educational resources, and contribute to a crowdsourced database of scam reports. By leveraging advanced validation techniques and partnerships with relevant stakeholders, SafeSG aims to protect users' financial well-being and personal information while fostering community trust and collaboration in the fight against fraud.

Features

Screenshot Upload: Users can upload screenshots of incoming calls and emails.
Text Extraction: SafeSG employs advanced Text Extraction techniques, including Language Model Testing (LLM), to extract text from screenshots automatically.
Message Analysis: Utilizing LLM, SafeSG analyzes the extracted text from screenshots to identify potential scam content and phishing attempts.
Phone Number Verification: Extracts phone numbers from screenshots and checks against a database of known scam numbers.
Email Validation: Extracts email addresses from screenshots and verifies their legitimacy by checking against official bank emails and known scam lists.
Community Reports: A crowdsourced database where users can report and share their experiences with scams.
Real-Time Alerts: Receive notifications about new scams reported in your area.
Educational Resources: Access to tips and articles on how to recognize and avoid scams.

Tech Stack

The frontend of SafeSG is developed using Flutter, a cross-platform framework renowned for its ability to create beautiful and intuitive mobile applications. Leveraging Flutter ensures that SafeSG users, who are predominantly mobile-centric, can access the platform conveniently from their smartphones. With the prevalence of scams occurring through phone calls and emails, the decision to use a mobile app built with Flutter aligns with the need for a user-friendly and accessible solution.

On the backend, SafeSG utilizes Express, a robust Node.js framework, to handle data processing and communication between the frontend and backend components. This choice of backend technology enables efficient handling of user requests and seamless integration with SafeSG's scam detection mechanisms. Additionally, SafeSG incorporates the Ollama 3 model, an advanced AI model, to analyze extracted information from screenshots and identify scam patterns effectively.

To enhance the platform's scam detection capabilities, SafeSG leverages Tesseract.js, a JavaScript library for optical character recognition (OCR). This allows SafeSG to extract text from uploaded screenshots, enabling automated analysis of call details and email contents for potential scam indicators. By integrating OCR capabilities, SafeSG streamlines the process of reporting and verifying suspicious activities, empowering users to take proactive measures against scams. SafeSG's backend architecture includes sophisticated scam detection mechanisms that utilize Language Model Testing (LLM) techniques to analyze extracted text and identify potential scams.

Challenges We Faced

Text Extraction Accuracy: Ensuring high accuracy in text extraction from varied and complex screenshots was a significant challenge.
Real-Time Analysis: Providing real-time analysis and alerts without compromising performance required extensive optimization. It is crucial for the analysis to be quick so that users can respond fast to block phishing messages.
User Interface Design: Designing an interface that is both powerful and easy to use for individuals with different technical skills was a delicate balance.
Database Integration: Integrating multiple databases for phone number and email verification posed technical challenges, especially in maintaining up-to-date information.

Conclusion

SafeSG's comprehensive revenue model ensures financial sustainability while aligning with its mission to protect users from scams and phishing attempts. By offering a combination of freemium features, subscription plans, partnerships, and non-intrusive advertisements, SafeSG maximizes value for users while generating revenue to support ongoing development and expansion. With its innovative approach to combating financial frauds and its commitment to user protection, SafeSG is poised to make a significant impact in safeguarding individuals and businesses from the growing threat of scams and phishing attempts.