Before You Trust is a public-web research tool designed to help users review identity-related information before making their own trust decisions. The interface separates search, candidate identity selection, and evidence review instead of collapsing everything into a single opaque score.
Context
Name-based public-web research is noisy. Multiple people may share the same name, search engines return ambiguous results, and a system can easily overstate confidence if identity resolution is handled carelessly.
My role
I designed and implemented the product flow, search infrastructure, evidence presentation, privacy choices, deployment, analytics, and supporting website experience.
Approach
- Search public-web sources through a self-hosted search stack.
- Require explicit user confirmation of the intended identity before presenting a report.
- Preserve source links so findings remain inspectable.
- Avoid presenting a simplistic universal trust score as fact.
- Keep search results transient rather than building a persistent profile database.
- Provide a manual research path when automated matching is uncertain.
Infrastructure
The project uses SearXNG and YaCy components behind a deployed web application, with AWS EC2 and Caddy supporting the public service. The implementation also includes analytics, SEO files, and an optional report-delivery flow.
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For broader context, see Jenifer's research overview, technical skills, and contact page.