Late last year, Balaji Vijayaraghavan downloaded Snapit, a money-lending app.

A few days later, he lost ~ Rs. 1 lakh from his bank account.

Balaji immediately froze his bank accounts and launched an investigation.

A thread. (1/n)

He wanted to find out how the data breach occurred, for which he worked with @SaveThemIndia, of which he's the TN branch president.

Their investigation threw light on some baits that most of us fear, but choose to ignore. (2/n)

They found 59 malwares in the app, which allowed the scammer to-
- access the phone's gallery and contacts
- send messages from the phone w/o the owner's knowledge
- read messages and thus, the OTP for bank transfers. (3/n)

Balaji believes that this was done to "convert the dark web transactions via cryptocurrency, and use it for local operational activities in India." (4/n)

Cryptocurrency is a non-traceable form of transaction digitally circulated in the dark web, the most popular being bitcoins.

As of today, 1 BTC = 47656 $

(5/n)

Reports show us that Balaji is one of the growing number of people who have been at the receiving end of the rapidly proliferating cyber crimes. (6/n)

The number of recorded crimes has especially grown since the pandemic struck the world:
- Pune ~4,759 cyber crime cases
- Delhi ~29,847
- Cyberabad ~ 1119
- Hyderabad 1,200
- Ghaziabad ~1,755
(7/n)

@SaveThemIndia has filed a petition in the SC urging it to take measures to pass the Data Protection Bill, 2019.

We spoke to Balaji and the founder of@SaveThemIndia

Read the full interview. https://citizenmatters.in/india-cybercrime-digital-loan-app-fraud-china-23565