scamprevention

I built Trust Check BD after losing 900 BDT to an online scam

In May 2026, I lost 900 BDT to an online scam. The money wasn't the biggest problem. The bigger problem was realizing that before sending money to a seller, there was no simple place where I could search and ask: “Has anyone reported this person or business before?” So I decided to build it. I started Trust Check BD — a free, community-powered platform where people can: → Search phone numbers, bKash/Nagad accounts, websites, Facebook pages, businesses, etc. → See reported scam cases → Submit reports with evidence → Help others avoid similar scams But building it wasn't just about creating a search box. Some of the engineering challenges were interesting: Normalizing Bangla + English search queries Matching different types of identifiers Connecting related reports without uncontrolled database crawling Evidence-based manual moderation Spam and abuse protection Redis caching for repeated searches Localized EN/BN SEO Automatically updating public report pages and sitemap data The most important lesson for me: When you're building a trust product, a false positive can be just as harmful as a missed scam. That's why a submitted report doesn't immediately become a public warning. It goes through validation, evidence collection, and human review first. I documented the full journey—from the original 900 BDT incident to the product architecture, challenges, technology choices, traction, and future roadmap. 👉 Full case study: monirhrabby.com/case-study/trust-check-bd I'm sharing this mainly to document what I learned while building a real product from a very personal problem. Search before you pay. Report when it happens. buildinpublic nextjs typescript mongodb prisma webdevelopment startup trustcheckbd