Ukrainian developers have created an extension for Chrome that identifies sites of Russian origin

Ukrainians have developed an extension for Google Chrome that marks sites of Russian origin. The development is called Russian websites, go f yourself, or RWGFY for short. DOU asked the co-author of the idea about the nuances of RWGFY's work, as well as the further development of the project.

The main thing is why did you create RWGFY? The idea to develop a browser extension that would identify sites of Russian origin came to the mind of digital marketer Anton Lyakhovsky. He shared it with a friend and CEO of SOFTUM IT company Ivan Volyanik.

"I often use the MOZ plugin for SEO tasks at work-it shows metrics next to each site in Google search results. [When I came up with the idea for RWGFY], we called Vanya and then created a chat with his team. I threw in the first ideas, the guys offered their own. The task was to show whether the site is Russian in front of each site in the search. But not just by .ru in the domain, but a little deeper," says Lyakhovsky.

Thanks to the development, the end user immediately sees where to go and which sites are better not to visit, because they can collect data, spread viruses, etc.

How does RWGFY work? Using the WHOIS protocol, the extension receives registration data about domain name owners (in particular: the country of registration of the owner, the country of registration of the domain name, etc.), explains Lyakhovsky. All the data obtained is analyzed using a special algorithm, which, taking into account the information received, provides an expert assessment of the origin of the site.

"If the collected data is not enough to accurately determine the country of origin of the site, it gets a mark "under suspicion". Information about the analyzed sites is stored on the server and, if necessary, it can be additionally checked manually in order to make the necessary adjustments and improve the quality of the plugin," the co — author of the project comments.

What are the project's prospects? Anton Lyakhovsky says that the team has a lot of ideas for developing RWGFY. In the next version, users will be able to change the default markings, such as "site of the aggressor country", to their own, so that everyone can call it whatever they want. The team wants " some tags to become memes." New die designs are being prepared for users.

"We also faced a problem: some sites that are really of Russian origin cannot be checked as we check most of them. Therefore, we add the ability to click the appropriate button and send us a request for this site in the backend (and then mark such resources using our database, which is created by users)," Lyakhovsky notes.

Details

Currently, RWGFY has almost 900 active IP addresses, which generated about 100 thousand requests (via the API). According to Lyakhovsky, 300-400 new users are added per day, and this figure is gradually growing.

When the number of users increases, the team will add the ability to automatically change the wording "in Ukraine" to "in Ukraine" and other features. The team jokes that "a paid feature can be a change on the page of each word" Putin "to the well-known phrase😊".