Buying Guns and Drugs on the Deep Web
To avoid surveillance, people from around the world have taken to anonymous web-browsing services like Tor, which disguise IP-addresses and create a long list of server connections that make it nearly impossible to fall victim to the prying eyes of the authorities. These networks are 1000 to 2000 times bigger than the whole of the searchable, so-called “surface” or “clear” Web, and are comprised exclusively of sites placed into the dark corners of the web on purpose.
Welcome to the “dark net”, an unregulated space being used to a large extent to engage in illegal activity, discuss child abuse, search for information on censored topics, organize political action and, more and more, to buy and sell weapons and controlled substances. Of course, by sheer virtue of the dark net’s anonymity it’s difficult to be certain just who, exactly, you are communicating with, and to what degree offers and posts on various platforms and forums translate from the digital underbelly to the actual physical world.