1

What is the purpose of the project?

The purpose of the project is to discover the different ways that malicious people
try to scam other people over email, followed by developing a software based
solution to mitigate the risks of people falling for such scams. I thought of
different ways to implement the application into as many inboxes as possible and I
came to the conclusion that the best way to do so is by developing it as a browser
extension. The main technology used in the application will be Javascript.
Therefore, the user experience will also be very pleasant. Of course, there is a
lot of research to be conducted in order to first identify all these new complex
email scams, develop the algorithm to foresee red flags and only after to think of
user experiences.
2
What are the planned or desired outcomes?
The ideal outcome is to reduce email scams worldwide: anybody using the software
developed during this time should be protected from the dangers of malicious
emails. I will aim for the software to minimise the risks of its' users to handing
sensitive information to the wrong person, to mitigate any attempt of email
impersonation being successful, together with saving email users, students,
businesses and organisations from incurring any financial losses due to email
phising and scamming. Each day 200 to 300 billion emails are being sent, many of
which are malicious. My goal is to develop a software that will be able to identify
these emails and alert the users of their intentions in real time.
3
Explain your research design
For a completely successful application all around a multitude of approaches would
be required. Some of the requirements of the applications are understanding these
new emerging scams, finding out how the software can be implemented in as many
inboxes as possible, what would most likely make users want to install the
extension/application, what are the challenges that email users find in detecting
email scams themselves etc. Therefore, the best research method would be using
mixed methods. This will give me the complete picture of how and why users get
scammed over email.
4
Outline the principal methods you will use
It's a great advantage that a lot of information is collected in technology. This
paired with the longevity and popularity of email made me came to the conclusion
that the main method that I will be using will is reviewing already conducted
researches on email usage, historical data, reputable journals etc. The internet is
a great medium to find technology resources: doing only a small initial information
gathering process I came across a lot of relevant information, researches and other
trusted sources. I am confident I can also find relevant Big Data sets that I can
use towards defining a more complete picture on email scams. All these paired with
the other research methods that I will be using will help me get new insights into
how email scams can be stopped once and for all by anyone and for free.

Another research method used will be a couple one on one interviews I will conduct
with email users. I will select the participants based on different levels of email
usage. I will also take into account if they were scammed in the past and their
technical background. This method will offer me the opportunity to find out more
about the users and how they think in relation to email. Why do they trust emails
in the first place? What email platforms are they using? Do they trust one more
over another? Are they using a security solution/antivirus?

By combining multiple methods of research we can unveil critical insights into how
people use and trust email. Hence we can work towards improving the lives of email
users by definitely saving them time through automatically marking emails as scam
attempts and quite possibly also saving them money and other resources (if they
were to fall prey to the scam attempts).