Welcome to the Dark Web

The dark web has a reputation for being somewhere you probably shouldn’t go. It’s a place most of us associate with anonymous drug markets, stolen data, hackers and criminals operating beyond the reach of the law. But behind the ominous name is something less dramatic, and perhaps more interesting: a part of the internet built around anonymity.

And once you get there, things can look surprisingly familiar.

There are marketplaces, there are sellers, there are customers, there are reviews, FAQs and even pages explaining exactly what a person is offering. Research by Huntress, a cybersecurity platform that protects businesses from hackers, ransomware, and digital threats, found that some dark web operators market their services much like businesses operating on the conventional internet, complete with pricing and different packages.

The difference is that these businesses are operating behind layers of anonymity.

So, who is actually using the dark web? What happens when you become a seller? And if these sites are as dangerous as their reputation suggests, why do they continue to exist?

What is the dark web?

Before going any deeper, it is worth clearing up one common misconception: the deep web and the dark web are not the same thing.

The internet most of us use every day is known as the surface web. It includes websites that engines can find and index, from news sites and social media to online shops.

Then there is the deep web, which refers to the much larger amount of online content that engines cannot access or index. Your online banking, private emails, cloud storage and company intranets all sit within the deep web. In fact, you use it every time you log into an account.

The dark web is a much smaller part of the deep web. Unlike the rest of the internet, it is deliberately hidden and requires specific software, such as the Tor browser, to access. Many dark-web sites use .onion addresses and are designed to provide users with a greater degree of anonymity.

That anonymity is what makes the dark web different. It can be used to conceal criminal activity, but it can also protect journalists, whistleblowers and people communicating in countries where online activity is monitored, or information is restricted.

Some dark web marketplaces look like ordinary online shops. Huntress found Us pages, pricing, promotional packages and reviews.

For Alex, not his real name, becoming a vendor was surprisingly straightforward.

“Getting a seller account on a few sites was pretty easy,” he says. “You registered and paid a fee. Most markets charged a sign-up fee of £200 to £500,” Alex told Trill.

“The hard part was establishing yourself as a trustworthy vendor with good products. Customers relied heavily on reviews and reputation.”

“Running a shop on the dark web is very similar to selling on sites like eBay or Vinted, just with more drugs. Buyers found listings, compared prices and checked feedback. From my side, there were a lot of orders to process, messages to answer and sometimes complaints delivery,” Alex said.

Payments were taken via crypto (Monero). The majority of markets used escrow services, which meant the site would hold payment until the buyer confirmed they had received the order. The marketplace would also take a commission, usually 5%.

Buyers compared prices and feedback, while sellers dealt with orders and complaints. Payments used cryptocurrency, including Monero, with most markets using escrow.

“Customers were never completely anonymous to us,” Alex says, but physical orders still need a name and delivery address.

“It was always a bizarre dynamic to me, logging into an ‘illegal’ website and then handing your details over to someone in order to buy drugs.”

“Operational security (opsec) is pretty key when operating a business like this. The difficult part was the unknowns. Were the markets already infiltrated by the feds? Think Hansa Market. Was the market’s security up to scratch? I could trust my own security, but trusting things outside my control was always a lot harder.”

Alex says buyers sometimes threatened to hack him over late deliveries. His business partner ultimately made him leave after disputes over delays.

“He didn’t take this well, and things escalated. He threatened to send people round to beat me up. That’s when I cut ties and dipped out.”

Why don’t dark webs just get taken down?

Marketplaces can be seized and administrators arrested, but the wider network can survive. Research examining 24 marketplace closures between 2011 and 2019 found trading activity often recovered as users migrated to surviving markets.

The 2017 takedown of AlphaBay and Hansa showed this. AlphaBay had more than 200,000 users, 40,000 vendors and over 250,000 listings shortly before its seizure, according to the US Department of Justice .

Dutch police had secretly taken control of Hansa rather than immediately shutting it down. When AlphaBay disappeared, users moved to Hansa without knowing police were running it. Europol recorded an eight-fold increase in new Hansa members before it was eventually closed on 20 July.

Research found 66% of migrating users moved to the same surviving marketplace, usually an established market with higher trading volume.

Takedowns can produce arrests, intelligence and seizures, but can also push users and vendors towards other platforms.

From Silk Road to today

Silk Road, launched in 2011, established a model later marketplaces would copy: Tor, cryptocurrency, listings, seller reputations, reviews and escrow.

Silk Road was seized in 2013, but Silk Road 2.0, Agora and Evolution followed .

As markets developed, so did their security. Research into 12 major markets identified CAPTCHAs, multi-factor authentication, anti-phishing systems, rate limiting and multisignature transactions.

Escrow also creates vulnerability: users must trust the marketplace holding their money, while exit scams can see markets disappear with users’ funds.

On the other side of the dark web, thereare the buyers. I spoke to one of them to figure out how easy it really is to make a purchase off an encrypted site.

Joe, not his real name, told me, “Once you find trusted links to the sites you need it can take minutes”

Orders could arrive the day, or more often within a couple of days. “Very quick, stealthy and efficient in general,” he said.

At first, there was a reason to be nervous. “An anonymous person could literally send you anything with very little consequence.”

When asked how they knew who to buy from, Joe replied, “Normally based on reviews from other people.” A lot of trust comes from the reviews of other buyers.

“The dark web is amazing because it is completely anonymous, but that also carries its own risks, and people out there do exploit it for hacking and scamming.”

“I thought it would be a place you could buy unicorns and leprechauns turns out its just full of people selling drugs online [rather than the streets]. I wish more magical creatures were for sale on the dark web,” Joe told Trill.

So, is the dark web actually dangerous?

There are genuine risks. Criminal marketplaces facilitate illegal trade, while anonymity can make users harder to identify and remove protections available on the surface web.

But the technology itself is not inherently criminal.

The Guardian operates SecureDrop , which uses Tor to allow sources to send messages and documents anonymously. It is also used by The Washington Post, ProPublica and The New York Times.

The same infrastructure can protect a whistleblower or conceal a criminal.

What actually happens on the dark web?

There is no single answer. The dark web is built around anonymity, which can be used for very different purposes.

Marketplaces can look like ordinary shops. Sellers build reputations, buyers read reviews and users can move when platforms disappear.

The dark web may be hidden, but much of what happens there is familiar: people buy, sell, communicate and protect who they are.

The technology provides the anonymity. What happens behind it depends on the people using it.

And apparently, sometimes, they are still looking for unicorns.

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