PHISHing Trip

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Inspiration

PHISing Trip was initially designed when we realized how much unattended information was abandoned around social media and the entire internet. Many users do not bother keeping track of or even remember their submissions to the internet from a couple to several years ago. In return, these pieces of personal information will remain dormant until a malicious actor uncovers it, repurposing that information for nefarious uses.

What it does

PHISHing Trip helps ensure that everyday users are aware of the digital footprints they have left behind allowing for immediate action in order to prevent targeted attacks using such information. It does this by scanning a consenting user’s account and flagging down any potentially exploitable pieces of information. PHISHing Trip then informs the user of all related vulnerabilities as well as providing the location where the vulnerability was found. This is a preventative measure that not only informs the user of how to carry out their internet usage in a safer manner but also prevents any potential attackers that may stumble across that information later on.

How we built it

PHISHing Trip was designed using API’s such as Meta’s InstagramBasicDisplayAPI in order to securely request and handle the data of users in order to determine potential vulnerabilities. In order to process the information, JavaScript was incorporated when receiving, as well as HTML and CSS in addition to Bootstrap to display this information formally.

Challenges we ran into

“Working with the InstagramBasicDisplayAPI was my first time working with an API, and so learning the proper semantics and documentation was a challenging but rewarding experience.” -Cameron

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating the functions and algorithms required to reliably identify certain types of personal information embedded within social media posts was a rewarding experience once figured out.

What we learned

We learned a variety of different skills while working on this project, such as improving our UI design as well as ability to handle and manage API calls.

What's next for PHISHing Trip

We want to continue improving on PHISing Trip as a project. There are many avenues for improvement such as improving the diversity of data types that can be flagged and incorporating more context elements such as image and video recognition. We are also interested in expanding or search to more social media sites, which exponentially increases the help it provides in alerting those of improper disposal of such personal information.