I'm amazed that buyers will trust anonymous online drug dealers with their address.
Isn't that what happens?
Isn't that what happens?
Down the line if your address was exposed you could claim to have stuck them back in the mail unopened with return to sender written on them?
I wouldn't like to be relying on that though.
However, for recreational consumer use, you're talking quantities that absolutely could not justify such an operation. The value in such an operation through a traditional drug dealing network would be that the person caught could serve up information on who they got it from. When you're talking about buying drugs anonymously online, none of that information will be available.
And wouldn't you then be into amounts exceeding recreational amounts?
PM is €3-€4 for a standard package, so what I'll regularly encounter is things on Amazon that are free delivery to the UK but quite a bit more expensive than PM to be delivered to Ireland.
Things also seem to ship through PM drastically faster than through the normal postal service.
The real criminals will have the stuff delivered to some poor unfortunate who they've scared witless and not worry about the minutiae.
But you make a good point - if you are going to invent a name, you should probably choose one of the previous occupants.
I don't know about the US though.
Only idiots are communicating their addresses unencrypted - PGP encryption for addresses is standard. So the only way for your address to be matched to your dark net activity is if a.) the person you are buying from gets busted and b.) the person you're buying from doesn't destroy the address after they ship the package.
The police use undercover drug dealers on the streets. Why wouldn't they use them online, where it is much cheaper and safer.
The political fallout in Canada for running a raid where nothing is found is massive. Warrant mistakes have landed police agencies on the front pages for weeks, if it came out they were doing raids based on next to no police work, not only would the police be under fire but the judges would be too.
> Only idiots are communicating their addresses unencrypted
As someone who is well aware of being hopelessly clueless regarding discovering even the most simplest of illicit transactions to save one's own life, I was wondering how people find out about new or existing dark-net markets beyond nebulous "word of mouth" scenarios one sees amongst the "old guard" "Liam Neeson"-type gangster characters in film.
However now, with the revelations of the past year or so, it seems like the kind of thing that is risky to try and discover until after you learn tradecraft and how to protect your identity while exploring darknets.
I decided to fire up Tor and have a look at the places mentioned in the article, having previously browsed (but never used) Silk Road before it was busted out of similar curiosity.
They're basically as described. It's fairly disturbing that these exist. I don't mind people buying and selling drugs, as people are going to do that, but on these same market places people are selling identities, fraud equipment (POS and ATM skimmers), stolen credit card details, funds from hacked accounts and, most disturbingly, weapons.
The weapons are by far the worst aspect of it. There's listings for everything from 3D printed guns through to modified AK47s that are now fully automatic. Worst of all, there is materials listed for making explosives, as well as components like fuses and switches.
I hate to think of whose hands these things end up in.
1. http://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-likely-targets-anybody-whos-tor...
You still have to compartmentalize your illicit (or, in the case of research, simply suspicious) activity from your day-to-day computer activities, rigorously.
But I suppose for the original, "read only" purpose of perusing dark markets, Tails may suffice.
Most buyers on these sites are using some kind of drop, like a virtual office that accepts the package then forwards it or they go pick it up.
Easily more risky
However when you're talking about recreational / party drugs like marijuana, MDMA, etc., these come through large distribution networks with an inherent level of trust and common cause to minimize risk inbuilt. If you, for example, wanted to get some marijuana, you'd probably go to a friend that you know smokes it, because he clearly has a source for it.
You'll go to someone you feel you can place some level of trust and confidence in, and likewise they will go to, or direct you toward, someone they place a level of trust and confidence in.
Every actor in that scenario is seeking to minimize their risk. The consumer will use caution in who they deal with and likewise the middlemen or distributors will use caution in who they deal with.
This will be underlined by the fact that low level recreational drugs dealing isn't a massively profitable activity. Only further up the distribution chain, far away from the end user, will profit rise and with it, risk.
I personally cannot fathom buying drugs from someone totally unconnected online. The odds of you ending up buying drugs from a police officer when you go to a friend of a friend, versus when you're buying them from a faceless entity online are incredibly different.