The crowdsourced platform Bribes.fyi, launched on July 2, 2026 to let Indians anonymously log bribery demands across departments like police, RTO and tax offices, has abruptly vanished after an “indefinite break” notice. Its young creator, Aryan Nishad, said the voluntary shutdown aims to prevent misuse, echoing concerns that doomed earlier initiative ipaidabribe.com despite strong public support online.
AN ANTI-CORRUPTION WEBSITE Bribes.fyi, created to allow people to report bribery demands anonymously, made headlines recently after gaining around 200,000 users in its last 48 hours. In a recent development, the anti-corruption website is no longer available at its domain address. Earlier, the website had announced that it had decided to go on an “indefinite break.”
Now, the URL leads to a page that reads, “Site not found: Looks like you followed a broken link or entered a URL that doesn’t exist on Netlify.”
Bribes.fyi went viral after users on social media shared the link to a website that allows users to report bribery demands they were asked to comply with. The website received over five million requests in its last 48 hours, as reported by NDTV, and gained instant virality within a brief period.
A Firstpost article reported that the website was launched on July 2, 2026, giving users a platform to anonymously report bribery demands across various states in the country.
Many users have expressed their disappointment over the website shutting down after it gained widespread attention for its initiative against corruption and also expressed curiosity about the person who built Bribes.fyi.
Bribes.fyi, a crowdsourced platform, provided users with a space to report any bribery demands they had faced. It also allowed them to share whether they paid the bribe or refused to comply.
The “About Us” page of Bribes.fyi, as shared by The Indian Express Hindi, stated that the data collected through user-provided information was used for “department rankings, city breakdowns and service-level statistics to promote transparency.” It further emphasised that the website does not sell user data.
It also clarified its anonymity policy, stating that the website does not record users’ IP addresses. It also stated that no personal information about anyone involved should be mentioned when reporting a bribery experience. It further read, “It is one-way hashed with a daily-rotating salt purely for spam and abuse prevention.”
Bribes.fyi included options for multiple departments, including the Police, RTO, Revenue/Land Records, Passport Office, Municipal Corporation, GST Office, Electricity Board, Income Tax Department, and Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
This anti-corruption website was subjected to immense hype, and it was later revealed that a 20-year-old B.Tech student was behind the creation of Bribes.fyi.
As reported by The Better India, Aryan Nishad is a B.Tech student at Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology in Delhi who created Bribes.fyi. He has described the anti-corruption website as a platform that prioritizes privacy and enables users to report incidents without creating an account.
Users can provide details about a government department, including the city, the amount allegedly demanded, the purpose of the payment, and other relevant information. They can also mention whether they paid the amount or refused to comply. After submission, the report is displayed on the website while protecting the user’s privacy and keeping their identity anonymous.
A message was posted on the website explaining the reason behind its shutdown. The message stated that the shutdown was a “precautionary” measure to prevent any misuse of the information or platform.
“Thanks for all the feedback and insights—we are taking an indefinite break and have no plans to enable the submissions again. This is a voluntary decision to sunset the website and a precautionary step to avoid any misuse of the platform, not a response to any complaint,” it read.
It is not the first time a digital platform has been created to counter corruption. A platform with a similar intention was launched in 2010, named ipaidabribe.com, which aimed to uncover bribery incidents faced by its users.
The website enabled users to describe their bribery experiences by providing information such as what the bribe was for, how much was demanded, where it happened, etc. The website gained widespread attention and was even named as one of the ten techniques to fight corruption in India in a Times of India report in 2011. The anti-corruption website eventually disappeared.
In a video posted by author Sarthak Ahuja, he talked about the slow decline of the ipaidabribe.com website and the reasons behind it. He cited two reasons for this. Firstly, the 2018 amendment to the Prevention of Corruption Act, which punishes a person involved in giving a bribe. The second reason was mainly “behavioural economics.”
He explained that if such information is made available to the public in any economy, “it leads to a bigger problem. Why? Because people know that I can pay this amount and get away with it. Or departments which were earlier not charging a price now know that they can charge and start charging it.”
ipaidaBribe.com was shut down, and former IAS officer T. R. Raghunandan was running the website at the time. He told ThePrint that many funders had started “pulling out” of the website.
The internet has praised the website’s cause, leading to its instant virality, with many users expressing their disappointment over its shutdown. Right before its shutdown, the website showed that more than 600 bribery-related incidents had been reported.
Madhya Pradesh-based YouTuber Amit Kilhore shared on X, “The people who know coding, who can make websites at fly, are the people who need to be civic conscious. Coz they have the power of accountability in their keyboards.”
“This is a great initiative. But the officer who took the bribe must be named. Otherwise, the whole purpose of building this website is wasted,” wrote another X user. One user asked, “The question is how the bribery accusation is verified. How can the fake ones be filtered?”
Many users pointed out that the weakest part of the website was its verification note. “That last note is the biggest point on why anything crowdsourced in India is not accurate,” noted another user on X.
(Edited by Harsh Pandey)
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