Pause Before You Press

Inspiration

I felt inspired by the emails my university sends out to bring awareness to scams. The emails often pose as official or trusted parties, include attachments and bait students into clicking links. Instead of just send fake scam emails, it would be helpful to define strategies to identify scams and how to handle them safely.

What it does

This website focuses on equipping users with the skills to identify scams and to practice those skills in a safe environment. The website identifies two strategies : Pause and SLAM that help identify scams. Then you can practice identifying the scams in a mini quiz. The quiz intentionally does not provide a score, as I felt a score might discourage people from learning.

How it is built

This website is built using VSCode, HTML, CSS and vanilla JavaScript. Additionally, Git/GitHub for version control and Vercel for deployment.

Challenges

It was difficult to narrow down the scope of what I wanted to achieve. The project went through several versions, one including a practice space for learning to prompt AI. With too many ideas and time constraints, the goal of the website became unclear. I decided to focus on a single aspect of online safety.

Accomplishments

This is my first solo project in the realm of web development, putting together some of the skills I have learned through personal study and coursework.

Lessons Learned

I learned more about JavaScript and the strategies to protect against scammers.

What's next for Pause Before You Press

Additional features could be added in the future to incorporate other aspects of online safety as well as AI integration. I would like to also include information on password strength and password managers that help identify passwords that are compromised.

Built With

• css3
• git
• github
• html5
• javascript
• vercel
• vscode