My younger cousin Sahil called me on Sunday evening excited like he had won a lottery ticket. He sent me an Instagram link showing brand new top-model smartphones being sold for just nine hundred rupees.
“Look at this festival deal!” he shouted through the phone speaker. “The website timer says only six minutes are left before the offer expires. Should I buy two?” I told him to put his card back in his pocket.
I looked at him. “Remember our local bazaar?” I asked. “Imagine a stranger shouting that brand-new Apple phones are fifty rupees each. Would you trust him?”
Sahil went quiet for a moment. “It’s obviously a trick.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And the internet works the exact same way.”
Thieves set up duplicate shopping sites every weekend. They rip off brand photos and invent customer feedback. They add flashing timers to make families hurry. When someone types their card numbers there, no phone ever arrives. You are handing your card number and CVV directly to an online thief.
I gave Sahil two ground rules he follows every day now:
If a deal looks too cheap, it’s fake. Big stores don’t hand out gadgets almost free.
Skip links sent in private chats. Always open the verified store app on your phone.
Then I had him set up the CYBX security app. CYBX is a digital safety app built in India by 63SATS. It runs quietly in the background on your smartphone.
Whenever you accidentally click a malicious shopping link or open a fake payment page, CYBX’s link scanner catches the trap and blocks the website before your browser even loads it. It also checks UPI payment QR codes so you don’t send money to fraud accounts.