In the FBI's 2024 IC3 report, internet crime losses were estimated to be over $16B, with $4.8B attributed directly to individuals 60+. Many people know folks who have gotten hit by Medicare, investment, or tech support scams. You probably can think of someone close to you.
Antivirus programs are antiquated, bloated, and resource intensive and fail to protect users from scam sites. When I had a family member ask me what antivirus to buy for web threats I couldn't recommend anything.
We launched Ward to try and address this problem for our family members, but realized quickly it can help basically any non-savvy internet user - elders, children, non-technical folks, etc. It uses Gemini Nano in the browser under the hood for scanning the DOM and URL for anything suspicious, and has a cloud-enabled mode for supporting less capable hardware like Chromebooks.
We're currently open source and are looking for any and all feedback and testers. We're free in our beta with a high soft quota. When a threat is detected, the user will immediately be directed to stop and click the extension for details, blocking the scam from proceeding.
There's prob not many people on HN who would fall for these, but would you pay for this for peace of mind for a loved one?
