Fireside Chat

Safety in digital communications is an ongoing endeavor, with new friends and new faces comes new situations. We'd love to chat with you by the Fireside! What's your name?

Comment

Inspiration

The impact of digital footprints and the association of phone numbers to an individual often go unnoticed. Interfacing with new individuals and exchanging goods or services can be riskier then you think. By having control of conversation endpoints, an individual can reduce personal risks and protect their personal information.

What it does

Our service provides users with the ability to share an anonymized alias that is associated to their mobile phone number. Through Twilio's API a registered user can communicate with other Fireside accounts, and receive correspondences from unregistered numbers through SMS as a common medium with multiple aliases pointing towards a common phone number.

How we built it

We built a website where users associate an anonymous alias with their phone number. The information is stored on a mySQL database, consisting of two tables, to route conversations between users and maintain associated conversation pairs. Communications with a Twilio account provide Fireside Chat users with the ability to communicate with each other. Associated pairs of phone numbers that have initiated a conversations are stored in a secondary table within our mySQL database to maintain conversation persistence.

Challenges we ran into

Web communication protocols and implementing encryption required specific attention for data handling and port listening. Limitation in sponsorships and trial account permissions required innovative solutions, however they continue to constrain the early-development of our product's infrastructure.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Logic optimization in mySQL was a specific source of pride and inspiration. On-submission POST requests, allow for users to register easily with minimal overhead. Regular expression match parsing enabled client-side validation and server-side security.

What we learned

mySQL has limitations in logical short-circuiting, CORS (Cross Origin Request Scripting) has limited scope in abilities, but can be leveraged for securely sending data.

What's next for Fireside Chat

Add the following features:

  • Ability to change your alias name
  • Conversation validation (Accept/Deny Conversation Requests)
  • CSS IFrame
  • Correspondence Lifespan
  • Conversation Digests
  • User time availability

Built With

Share this project:

Updates