lydiastepanek/outline.txt

## outline.txt
I’ve always been fascinated by hacks in the news. It’s always seemed crazy to me that with all of the technological innovations over the past decade, still, every hack starts with the simplest of entrypoints: an email. And I’ve certainly fallen for my share of phishing emails. So I’ve always had an itch to solve this problem. Then separately, in early 2023, I felt stuck in my job at a large tech company, so I quit. I’ve always wanted to be the boss of my own schedule, so I decided to become a freelance web developer and an indie app developer on the side.

I noticed that a large majority of famous hacks in the news begin with a successful phishing attempt, so I thought, why not make an anti-phishing tool?

First I built a free service called Is This Phishy that parsed potential phishing emails for free. Next, I built a Gmail plugin called Too Phishy. Along the way, I had to learn the tricks of the phishing trade and figure out how best to spot phishing emails, all using free tooling since my apps are free and open source.

Since releasing Too Phishy in November, Too Phishy has been installed by hundreds of people and even made it on the Google Workspace Top Rated page. As a happy side effect, my blog posts about building Too Phishy helped me to meet my now co-founders, with whom I’ve started a company to build security-focused software products
	I’ve always been fascinated by hacks in the news. It’s always seemed crazy to me that with all of the technological innovations over the past decade, still, every hack starts with the simplest of entrypoints: an email. And I’ve certainly fallen for my share of phishing emails. So I’ve always had an itch to solve this problem. Then separately, in early 2023, I felt stuck in my job at a large tech company, so I quit. I’ve always wanted to be the boss of my own schedule, so I decided to become a freelance web developer and an indie app developer on the side.

	I noticed that a large majority of famous hacks in the news begin with a successful phishing attempt, so I thought, why not make an anti-phishing tool?

	First I built a free service called Is This Phishy that parsed potential phishing emails for free. Next, I built a Gmail plugin called Too Phishy. Along the way, I had to learn the tricks of the phishing trade and figure out how best to spot phishing emails, all using free tooling since my apps are free and open source.

	Since releasing Too Phishy in November, Too Phishy has been installed by hundreds of people and even made it on the Google Workspace Top Rated page. As a happy side effect, my blog posts about building Too Phishy helped me to meet my now co-founders, with whom I’ve started a company to build security-focused software products