To the best of our knowledge, a comprehensive overview of the opioid supply chain in the anonymous online marketplaces and forums, as well as a measurement study of trading activities, is still an open research challenge. This is the first study to measure and characterize opioid trading in anonymous online marketplaces and forums. From our measurement, we concluded that anonymous online marketplaces and forums provided easy-access platforms for global opioid supply. In our study, a total of 248,359 listings from 10 anonymous online marketplaces and 1,138,961 traces (ie, threads of posts) from 6 underground forums were collected. Among them, we identified 28,106 opioid product listings and 13,508 opioid-related promotional and review forum traces from 5147 unique opioid suppliers’ IDs and 2778 unique opioid buyers’ IDs.
Research: Drug Use & Dark Web Markets
There were almost 900 vendors to choose from, selling more drugs than I’d thought possible. Heroin, opium, cocaine, acid, prescription drugs are all readily available. They sit on an encrypted part of internet called “Tor Hidden Services” where URLs are a string of meaningless numbers and letters that end in .onion, and are accessed using a special browser called “Tor”. While drug checking services have been operating around the world for over 50 years, Barratt said Australia remained resistant to expanding the harm reduction service. MDMA, methamphetamines and heroin were consistently found to only contain the advertised substance. But products sold as ketamine, 2C-B and alprazolam were most likely to be completely substituted with other substances or new synthetic drugs.
How Did You Learn To Properly Use Darknet Markets?
By entering your email, you agree to receive customized marketing messages from us and our advertising partners. You also acknowledge that this site is protected by reCAPTCHA, and that our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. This article reveals the top 10 dark web markets dominating in 2025, their unique characteristics, and the critical implications for enterprise cybersecurity. The biggest takedowns in terms of volume – Silk Road, AlphaBay and Wall Street – have been police-led, but in 2018, the EMCDDA published a study which found that, of the more than 100 markets, just 10 percent closed as a consequence of overt police action. DF claims they are safe from investigation as the site’s business model differs from that of DeepDotWeb, which took affiliate sales fees in return for keeping lists of URLs updated.
STYX Market
The second time my parents found me and EMT s were able to narcan and resuscitate me. The third time I overdid it on a benzo analogue with not enough alcohol or opiates to stop my breathing and ended up coming to 7 days later. I don’t know if I was unconscious for those 7 days or what but I was incredibly week, dehydrated and disoriented.
- By offering so many options, these sites also just make it easier for psychonauts to explore what’s out there.
- Various friends and acquaintances of mine have a lot of experience of buying in this way, so I decided to ask them about why they choose to do this, and how they assess the pros and cons.
- This article reveals the top 10 dark web markets dominating in 2025, their unique characteristics, and the critical implications for enterprise cybersecurity.
- Contact us to learn more about our expertise in identifying cybercriminals and mapping out the often complex networks they operate.
- The opioid trader will also use an anonymous online forum (eg, The Hub Forum) to post promotional information to attract potential customers (step 3).
How DNMs Operate
In total, we collected 248,359 listings from 10 anonymous online marketplaces and 1,138,961 traces (ie, threads of posts) from 6 underground forums. As observed in our data set, the top 3 marketplaces with the most opioid listings are Agora, Evolution, and Apollon. Our research collected product listings and forum posts from 10 anonymous online market places and 6 forums. Our study determined the underground marketplace and forum list based on darknet site search engines and previous research works 20. More specifically, we used darknet site search engines (such as Recon, Darknet live, Dark Eye, dark.fail, and DNStats 21,22) to search underground marketplaces and forums and then manually validated their activeness.
Gibbons rejects the idea that shutdowns are a pointless and expensive waste of police time. “Although new DNMs have emerged, our work impacts on the trustworthiness of those running the sites. The replacement sites often take a considerable time to build up to the same vendor-customer base,” he said. Marie had never purchased drugs in the conventional way—and still hasn’t. Various friends and acquaintances of mine have a lot of experience of buying in this way, so I decided to ask them about why they choose to do this, and how they assess the pros and cons. Last month, the city of Providence, Rhode Island approved the establishment of what will be the state’s first safe injection site, and the only one to operate outside of NYC thus far.
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Regarding profits, darknet vendors do not have to limit their trading to face-to-face interactions, and can instead sell drugs to a potentially worldwide customer base. Your account must be older than 4 days, and have more than 20 post and 10 comment karma to contribute. “We have made a new addition to our content policy forbidding transactions for certain goods and services. As of today, users may not use Reddit to solicit or facilitate any transaction or gift involving certain goods and services,” the company wrote. Federal authorities announced last week several arrests, charges, and guilty pleas from a joint operation dubbed “Operation Darkness Falls,” which targeted people and organizations selling fentanyl and other drugs over the dark web. Among those arrested were the operators behind the dark web username “MH4Life,” which the Department of Justice called the most prolific dark web fentanyl vendor in the US and the fourth most prolific in the world.
Harm Reduction Services And Safe Injection Sites
Figures 2 and 3 illustrate examples of opioid listings in The Versus Project and Alphabay. The opioid trader will also use an anonymous online forum (eg, The Hub Forum) to post promotional information to attract potential customers (step 3). We aimed to profile the opioid supply chain in anonymous markets and forums via a large-scale, longitudinal measurement study on anonymous market listings and posts. Toward this, we propose a series of techniques to collect data; identify opioid jargon terms used in the anonymous marketplaces and forums; and profile the opioid commodities, suppliers, and transactions. We first conducted a whole-site crawl of anonymous online marketplaces and forums to solicit data. Darknet markets, also known as cryptomarkets, are online marketplaces that operate on the dark web.
A total of 248,359 listings from 10 anonymous online marketplaces and 1,138,961 traces (ie, threads of posts) from 6 underground forums were collected. This paper seeks to complement current studies widening the understanding of opioid supply chains in underground marketplaces using comprehensive, large-scale, longitudinal anonymous marketplace and forum data. To this end, we propose a series of techniques to collect data; identify opioid jargon terms used in the anonymous marketplaces and forums; and profile the opioid commodities, suppliers, and transactions. Specifically, we first conducted a whole-site crawl of anonymous online marketplaces and forums to solicit data.
These markets are accessible only through specialized software like the Tor browser and offer a wide range of goods and services, including illegal drugs, weapons, and stolen data. Reddit, a popular social media platform, has a number of communities dedicated to discussing and exploring darknet markets. On particularly invincible nights out, they bought drugs from sketchy men in dark corners of the club. Since 2010, the internet has facilitated countless illicit drug transactions, when the year-old “Adamflowers” marketplace moved onto the darknet and rebranded as “The Farmer’s Market,” the first major darknet marketplace for drugs. In early 2011, Silk Road opened for business and darknet marketplaces proliferated across the web. With every round of busts, the marketplace operators, vendors, and buyers learn from the mistakes of others and find new ways to protect themselves from arrest or from being ripped off.
This exposes users to risk as it is simple to copy a site’s code, host a fake version of it, circulate URLs online and steal users’ passwords to the official sites – and then steal their bitcoins. While the goods and services offered on darknet markets are often illegal, simply discussing or providing information about these markets on Reddit is not necessarily illegal. However, it is important to note that some subreddits may have specific rules about what types of content are allowed, and it is always a good idea to familiarize yourself with these rules before participating in a community. Some dealers these days are even brazen enough to boost their posts and pay for sponsored advertising. “Mushrooms and marijuana used to be hard to get and now they’re being marketed to me in beautiful packaging on Instagram,” says one 34-year-old in Austin, Texas, whom WIRED spoke to. More often than not, law enforcement is targeting the sellers more than the buyers.
DNMs may start when a single person, or a small group of people, decide to build one. This requires a considerable amount of technical experience, business skills, communication skills, and a questionable set of moral values. The .onion top-level domain (TLD) name is the dark web’s version of “.com” or “.net”. Unlike traditional TLDs, servers using the onion TLD are more difficult to locate. This makes it more difficult for authorities to locate and take down these sites. The Onion Project, or TOR is the predominant anonymous computer network.
