A new privacy-focused platform, Bribes.fyi, is giving people in India a way to report alleged bribe demands without revealing their identity. The crowdsourced platform allows users to document experiences involving government departments and makes approved reports publicly searchable. As of August 17, its public page lists around 559 approved reports.
Bribes.fyi describes itself as India’s first crowdsourced bribe registry. Users do not need to create an account or provide their name to submit a report. They can provide details such as the government department, the amount, the city and state, the service involved, and whether the bribe was paid or refused.
The platform also allows people to report cases in which they were refused payment of a bribe. Once submitted, reports go through human moderation before being added to the public dataset. Identifying information is not included in the public data.
According to the platform’s data documentation, the downloadable dataset does not contain a reporter’s IP address, device fingerprint, or account ID. Submission timestamps are also reduced to the day instead of showing the exact time.
The platform currently has around 559 approved reports, but Bribes.fyi cautions against treating the figure as a measure of corruption in India. The reports come from a small, self-selected group of people who chose to submit their experiences.
The platform says its dataset should not be used to calculate national or state-level corruption rates. Similarly, a department or city with more reports cannot automatically be considered more corrupt, as higher numbers may reflect greater platform usage.
Also Read: Bengaluru Engineer Builds AI Tool to Spot Potholes, Track Responsible Contractors
Bribes.fyi says every submitted report undergoes a basic human review for spam, abuse, and potentially fraudulent submissions. However, approval does not mean the incident has been independently verified or established as fact.
The platform is privately operated and is not an official government complaint or investigation portal. Its purpose is to make citizen-reported experiences visible and help identify possible patterns.
The public dataset includes details such as department, city, state, report date, report type, amount, service, official role and outcome, where provided. Reporter names, IP addresses, device fingerprints and account IDs are excluded.
The growing database could provide journalists, researchers and civic-tech groups with a structured record of reported experiences of bribery. However, Bribes.fyi recommends using the information to understand individual incidents and emerging patterns rather than treating it as a definitive ranking of corruption.