Take a moment to think about your day: How many things did you do online? Perhaps you made a call or two via WhatsApp. You sent at least one WhatsApp text. You might have looked up a restaurant, office, or other location on Google Maps, perhaps run a Google search, and used Gmail to send an email. You might have built a shopping cart on Amazon after spotting a brand while scrolling Instagram. Along the way, you may have forgotten to book an Uber, until a WhatsApp message reminded you – “where are you?”
Big Tech companies are increasingly running our lives. We rely on the apps for many, if not most, of our basic tasks. And the result is that we trust them to give us the right information, connect to our loved ones, bring us things securely, and get us places safely. That is a lot of trust placed in a very small group of private, profit-driven companies. What happens if they are incorrect? A lot of damage.
And it can happen to anyone. It happened to my partner and me.
To celebrate his birthday, my partner Vijay decided to host a small party at our home. We reached for our trusty neighborhood shop Seasons Wines. For the last few years, Google has improved its search results for several categories with “cards” – a conveniently summarized panel of all information related to what you just searched for. In the case of a business, this card throws up its full name, address, Google Maps location, and a helpful “call” button linking directly to their number.
So Vijay cranked up the Seasons Wine shop search result, and pressed call. “Hi, I wanted to order two bottles of red wine, one bottle of gin, one bottle of that new whiskey that you recommended, and six cans of my regular beer,” Vijay said.
“Yes sir, that comes to 10,671 rupees. Please pay on Google Pay and then we will send the order,” a voice said on the other end.
“Usually, I use my credit card with the delivery guy,” Vijay said.
“Yes sir, but this is a big order. For these orders we have started a new prepayment policy,” the man on the phone said.
Seasons Wine had never asked us to prepay an order. But we had never placed such a big order before. We proceeded to Google Pay the entire amount on the contact number.
An hour passed. “Where is the alcohol?” I asked Vijay.
Vijay called back. “Sir the order is ready, but because it is a big order, we need you to give your permit number,” the guy said.
Now my antenna was up. Seasons had never asked for that. Something was wrong.
I took the phone from Vijay. “What is this permit?”
“Ma’am, you have to pay 25,000 rupees for a Maharashtra government liquor permit, otherwise a one-time permit is 1,000 rupees,” the guy answered. “Otherwise, we will not be able to deliver to you.” The figures sounded right, but I now suspected we were being scammed.
“No problem, you don’t deliver it, I will come pick it up myself,” I said. Seasons Wine was just about 800 metres from our apartment.
“No ma’am, we are not delivering from the shop, all orders are being delivered from our godown,” the guy answered.
“Where is the godown? I will come there,” I answered. I knew now that we had probably been scammed.
“Ma’am, entry is not allowed at the godown, you will need to pay for the permit,” the guy said.
I was furious. I launched into the choicest expletives. Click. The line went silent.
For most of us, the internet is a collection of apps and websites that are run, in one way or another, by a few Big Tech American firms.”
I dialled again, but the call wouldn’t go through. I went to the WhatsApp account he had messaged from. No messages went through. We were blocked.
Meanwhile, Vijay walked up to Seasons Wine Shop. “Hey, I just called this number of yours and placed an order, but the guy keeps saying it is in a godown? Where is my order?”
The Seasons Wine shop guy looked at the number and groaned. “Arre sir! You too?” He pointed to a large, prominent notice at the front of the shop with that number printed in large, bold font. “So many customers have complained to us! We are tired of complaining to Google about this. Don’t call this number. This is not ours.”
And that was it. There was nothing we could do, except perhaps lodge a police complaint. I had heard how hard it could be to get the police to take cyber fraud complaints seriously. Besides, I reasoned, we were at fault. We willingly transferred money to an account. Perhaps the police will say that, too?
That night, I saw Vijay meticulously type out Seasons Wines’ correct phone number and save it. I went to the Google listing of the business and left a review, warning others that the number listed on the business listing was fraudulent. Several others had left similar warnings. We had simply never bothered to check.
For most of us, the internet is a collection of apps and websites that are run, in one way or another, by a few Big Tech American firms. We buy smartphones run on Android (Google) or iOS (Apple), download apps from Play Store (Google) or App Store (Apple), chat with our loved ones and our colleagues on WhatsApp (Meta), use Instagram to keep up with our social circle (Meta), watch videos on YouTube (Google), use Google Maps for navigation and Google search to look up facts or things. We use Gmail (Google) or Outlook (Microsoft) on our Windows laptop (Microsoft) to contact each other. More than one-third of all UPI transactions are on GPay (Google). We shop online on Amazon or Flipkart (owned by Walmart), and more than 40% of us are making UPI payments using PhonePe (FlipkartiFlipkartFlipkart, founded in 2007, is one of India’s oldest e-commerce companies, and is owned by Walmart.READ MORE/Walmart). About 80% of online ads are run on networks owned by Google and Facebook (Meta).
We have come to implicitly trust the systems and processes companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon use to verify people and businesses operating on their platforms.”
For most Indians, the internet = Big Tech companies. Our experience of the internet is shaped by these companies, and we assume anything that is discoverable or verified by them is safe and genuine. We trust a business more if it is listed on Google or Google Maps. And with this credibility, these businesses can convince us to hand over our personal data and our money.
We have come to implicitly trust the systems and processes companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon use to verify people and businesses operating on their platforms.
On most days, this substantially improves our quality of life. But it also means we do not stop to check information most of the time. In the pre-internet and pre-social media era, doing business with a new entity involved healthy scepticism and background checks. Paying money to someone we didn’t know was an elaborate process. If you are a child of the pre-internet era, you may remember sitting down to make your first online transaction with a credit card on a big desktop. These used to be family affairs, where everyone checked the stability of the dial-up connection and remained on high alert, ensuring the card details were fed correctly and no back button was pressed accidentally. All to ensure that one didn’t lose their money online.
That scepticism is slowly eroding as we increasingly place more trust in Big Tech. Nearly every scam has exploited the reach and algorithms of Big Tech firms and our implicit trust in them. Scammers use our online data, shared and stored with Big Tech firms and banks. They use the apps and systems owned by these companies to target us. This isn’t limited to India; the debate is happening globally, and governments are drawing up rules about who to blame when someone is defrauded online.
Google India has been running public awareness campaigns to warn people against digital fraud. Google has integrated Google Pay into India’s National Cybercrime Reporting Portal to help victims report crimes faster. It also joined the Safer Internet India coalition, a group of digital services, telecom, and fintech companies. Meta is also a member of this coalition, as are Microsoft and other organizations.
Nearly every scam has exploited the reach and algorithms of Big Tech firms and our implicit trust in them.”
Meta has also been running public service campaigns educating people about the most common cons – lottery scams, stock tip scams, fraud loan apps, and fraudulent texts from scammers impersonating loved ones.
Businesses on WhatsApp can now get verified with a blue tick, and in October 2025, the company launched a feature that warns users when they share their screen in a video call with an unknown number – a common tactic scammers use.
Despite all this, Big Tech firms are unable to stop online fraud. More than 43,000 cybercrimes reported between January and March 2024 alone involved the misuse of WhatsApp, the top platform for scammers. Another 22,680 crimes involved Telegram, and nearly 20,000 more involved Instagram.
So, what will get the government and Big Tech firms to stop scammers? The long-term solution probably lies in framing laws that fix accountability on the tools, companies, and people who fail to protect people from becoming victims. But until that happens, all we can do is make sure we understand the way Big Tech works so we can recognize a scammer, and avoid greed and temptation so that the scammers can’t get into our heads.
