You finally picked up the courage to visit the dark web and you took every necessary
precaution to stay invisible to the authorities.
At first, you were only going to look around and not actually purchase anything, but after
a few of your buddies came around to your house you all decided you’d buy a big bag
of illegal pills…not only that, after a few drinks you watched a video you shouldn’t
have watched.
You weren’t concerned, you used a VPN, your IP address couldn’t be seen by any prying
eyes.
And then, BOOM, one day the cops burst through your door.
How on Earth did that happen?
How did they find you?
That’s what we’ll discuss today.
5.
Hacking First of all, you should know that a lot of
people use the dark web for good reasons.
Maybe they are journalists, or political dissidents in countries with strict regimes, so some
human right advocates are happy that the authorities can’t find people in the dark web.
That’s why it was controversial when a cybercriminal named Eric Eoin Marques was arrested in 2013
and later got a prison sentence of 30 years.
This guy was certainly in the wrong, and was hosting websites within the dark that were
selling drugs, hacking techniques and money-laundering operations.
He was huge, and it’s thought his cloud computing company, Freedom Hosting, was hosting
almost half of the sketchy websites within the dark web.
The FBI got him.
They found his server in France and subsequently tracked him down to Ireland.
This shouldn’t have happened of course.
The Tor network this guy used was supposed to be impenetrable.
But then one day users started seeing something weird, a new code running in websites hosted
by Freedom Hosting.
Suddenly, all the websites went down.
That weird code exploited a Firefox vulnerability and so not only did the websites go down,
but people using those websites were unmasked.
Well, they were until they could update their software.
Tens of thousands of IP addresses were exposed and some of those people that were exposed
were arrested.
That could have been you and you might have been seen buying bags of Columbia’s finest
powder, but private email systems were also run on Freedom Hosting so journalists or freedom
fighters may also have been exposed.
So, that’s one way you could be found out using the dark web.
The government might get its crack team of hackers together and create a code that exploits
a vulnerability in some software.
It might not mean they come knocking at your door, but your name will certainly be saved
in the FBI’s database.
You’ve been flagged.
Thousands of people around the world have been arrested this way.
In the U.S., the FBI won’t say how it hacks its way into the dark web, while in other
countries, governments also keep their surveillance under wraps.
In the U.K., the government gives its intelligence agencies something called “Bulk Powers”,
which allows them to spy on people.
The thing is, the agencies don’t have to submit any information to the court as to
exactly how they got you.
That remains a secret.
If you’re worried about being hacked by the government though, wait till you hear
how they can get you without hacking you at all!
4.
Cops go undercover Sometimes the government doesn’t really
have to get technical... the authorities can use techniques they use on the streets…cops
can go undercover.
Let’s say you’re on the dark web and you find a place where you can get the illegal
substance MDMA.
All the reviews are positive regarding the seller, so you think, ok, I’ll take 500
pills because you’re in college and you want to pay your tuition fees off.
Well, you might just be buying your pills from a cop who's been undercover posing as
Rick the Raver, the merchant of molly.
Time and again cops have done this, with drugs, guns, poisons and images of children.
You see, you buy the stuff and you remain anonymous, but you still have to get your
contraband delivered.
That’s when the cops can grab you.
There are ethical concerns, though.
The cops can’t oversell their stuff.
They can’t say, “Hey, take those 500 pills, but I’ve got some great cocaine, too.
Do you want that?”
That’s called entrapment.
They can’t say, take 1,000 pills and I’ll throw in a gun.
That’s just not ethical.
Then you’ve got those images of kids that float around the dark web.
There has been a lot of controversy regarding the FBI putting out their own images and setting
up what is called a “honey pot.”
The problem is, once those images are out there they can be copied and spread all over
the web.
But you can avoid in-person delivery and avoid an undercover agent, right?
Well, if you think other means of scoring your gear are safe, stay tuned...
3.
The postal service You don’t have to be set up to have the
cops knocking at your door.
A huge amount of contraband is seized before it even gets to the buyer.
The post office can intercept a package, find a few ounces of cocaine, and then they can
get in touch with the police.
The police can then start an investigation, and while the buyer might not get arrested
because the package never arrived, the cops in the past have watched post office videos
and have been able to arrest the sender of the package, or packages.
In other cases they weren’t able to find the seller, so police allowed the post office
to deliver the package in what they called a, “controlled delivery.”
As soon as you pick it up, they swoop in on you.
It’s unlikely police will get involved if someone is buying, say, one single pill of
something, but if the package is big enough, there is always a risk.
Sometimes though, you can get busted and it’s not even your fault!
2.
A dealer’s data One outstanding case of someone being caught
selling drugs on the dark web was a kid in Germany who was arrested by police in 2015.
This 20-year old guy, who still lived with his mom, was found with a whopping 320 kilograms
of drugs in his bedroom.
Yep, you heard that right.
He pretty much ran a drug empire from his bedroom and sold drugs from the dark web to
people in Germany and in countries all over the world.
He would usually use a PO Box, not a house or apartment number, and the person who picked
the package was never the person’s name on the package.
If the person was ever caught picking up the drugs, he or she could just say, “Hey, that’s
not my name.”
The thing is, this kid still needed to pick up the drugs.
320 kilos is quite a pile of powders and pills, and it was when he was picking up one of his
packages that the cops got him.
But guess what, when the cops looked on this kid’s hard drive they found all the names
and emails of all the people he’d been selling to.
That included guys just buying for personal use – which was not much use to the cops
– but it also included bulk buyers who were selling on the streets of Germany and beyond.
Someone on the dark web managed to get to this kids profile and leave a message.
That message read, “Dealers, run for your lives.”
That’s the thing with the dark web…if someone else gets caught, your information
might be on their computer.
That kid became a millionaire very fast, but now he’s in prison and will be for possibly
another decade.
The problem is, no sooner than the kid was behind bars, someone else had taken over his
dark web domain.
Sometimes though, you can get busted without even visiting the dark web!
1.
Advertising The last way people are caught is when they
advertise their dark web marketplace on the very visible normal web that we all use.
Yep, they use the normal web to direct people to the dark web.
It’s a little silly, but Ross Ulbricht, the guy that ran the notorious Silk Road marketplace,
did just that.
He ran ads on a bitcoin web forum for the Silk Road, and those ads could be traced back
to him.
For such a smart guy, he definitely missed several big brain moments.
Now you need to watch this show, “Why You Should Never Visit The Dark Web” or watch
this show, “Can You Really Order A Mystery Box from The Dark Web?”