Long Reads
Why you can’t eat just one chip
We can’t eat just one chip because we are addicted to that packet of chips. Like drugs. Potato chips are carefully crafted with the holy trinity of salt, sugar and fat to hack the reward circuitry of our brain.
Inside the five-year battle food companies have fought to resist stricter labelling norms
India’s food regulator proposed changes in labeling rules to empower consumers: if the quantity of fat/salt/sugar exceeds a specified threshold, food packets would have a front-of-pack warning label. But this policy is not moving, following fierce opposition from the industry. My interviews with scientists, government officials, independent
Inside India’s booming dark data economy
India’s booming dark data economy: spyware, detectives, data brokers, scammers—all that and more. Thanks to lax privacy laws and high consumer demand, details on everything from how you shop to who you date are all for sale. Read the story on Rest of World [https://restofworld.org/2020/
India is pinning hopes on apps in virus fight
Indian public authorities are building apps—at least 17 are public—to fight COVID-19. In Mint, I wrote about the app ecosystem looking at two big products: Central government’s Aarogya Setu and Maharashtra government’s MahaKavach to explore what the apps can do, what they can’t and where
The murky world of India’s fintech scams
Wallets and UPI have taken over the Indian digital payment ecosystem. The reduction of friction in payments is driving the growth of new businesses. But it is also orchestrating fraud: thousands of Indians experience digital payment frauds every day, with sums ranging from a few thousand rupees to several lakhs.
How Chinese dating apps are exploiting the loneliness of India’s men
Dozens of scammy Chinese dating apps are exploiting the loneliness of Indian men outside of the Tinder-Bumble demographic. That includes India’s most downloaded dating app in 2019, L’amour. It’s as mainstream as it can get. What happens when men sign up? How does the machinery operate behind
Why India is falling behind in the Y2Q race
Encryption forms the backbone of secure cyberspace. It helps to protect the data we send, receive or store. Behind the high degree of confidence in the security of the most commonly used encryption algorithms, like RSA, lies an assumption: modern computers, including the fastest supercomputers, will take forever to factor
India’s proposed data protection act, explained
India’s parliamentarians must deliberate on the shortcomings of this bill. And if they want to empower individuals, they need to cede some of their own powers
India’s fake news challenge
Many of India’s misinformation campaigns are developed and run by political parties with nationwide cyberarmies.
How the fake-jobs industry scams Indians
Police departments across India, dozens of unemployed people, and placement agents all agree: online job scams are rampant. A scarcity of jobs and the anonymity of the Internet are enabling an Indian industry built around fake job promises. Why are so many people being tricked? How much money are they
