The Dark Web – part 1

The Deep Web, or Dark Web, is that area of the web which is not covered by the usual search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) as they cannot 'see' or retrieve its content.

The Deep Web protects both content and users and it has become a paradise for criminal organisations of all sorts everywhere in the world. You can find drugs, pedo-pornography, weapons, false documents and pretty much any illegal/immoral activity. Transactions are done in bit coins (will need to dedicate a post to bit coins soon) which will then need to be ‘cleaned’ to be reused again for any legal purchase.

After downloading the file, installing the software takes barely a couple of minutes and requires minimal computer skills. 

Once you've entered the Deep Web (won’t say how to do it but it’s quite easy) you’ll find different ‘markets’; the most famous is the Silk Road which was shut down by the FBI in 2013. 

Inside Silk Road you could find and buy everything, not only illegal items but also apparel, art, biotic materials, books, collectibles, computer equipment and much more. Here is an example:

A few months later a similar marketplace, The Farmer's Market, was introduced and you could even pay for your purchases through Paypal and Western Union. Then other sites came up, like Atlantis, Project Black Flag and Black Market Reloaded, and all were shut down.

This completely anonymous branch of the Internet is a vital tool for intelligence agents, law enforcement, political dissidents and anybody who wants to conduct their online affairs in private.

But some prosecutors and government agencies think that Silk Road was just the thin edge of the wedge and that the Deep Web is a haven for thieves, child pornographers, human traffickers, forgers, assassins and peddlers of state secrets and loose nukes.

The latest fast growing anonymous site is called 'Utopia', but again, it got shut down seven days after it started. Here is what you could find on the site:

Guns available

Fake notes

ATM hacking manuals

Current marketplaces where you can do your shopping are The Pirate Market, Hydra, Agora, Red Sun, Exxtacy, Outlaw, Pandora, BlackBank, Dark Bay, Silk Road 2.0, Torbay, Dream Market, The Majestic Garden and many others, which are not even named. Many others, like Topix Vallium, Project Nexus and Cannabis road, are under contruction.

Part 2 will be about a new search engine which makes buying dope and guns easy.