What Is The Dark Net?
Videographer: Oly Zayac; Interviewer: Jack Pasi, Perry Elyaderani; Editor: Oly Zayac
The world is rapidly changing. So is the way drug users get their drugs. It’s not uncommon for users to buy their drugs online, through darknet networks like the TOR network, an anonymous network browser service, operated by public organizations and individuals across the world.
Now there are some legitimate reasons for operating on the deep web, but also some not so legitimate purposes, which people use while on the browser. We spoke with Elon University student, Rohan Potthoff who’s been interested in computers and technology since an early age about the practicality of the darknet.
“Despite, what you may have heard about it; drugs, human trafficking, child pornography, buying weapons, hit men, there are some legitimate reasons as well,” Potthoff said. “It provides a way for journalists in countries with heavy censorship to get their message out, it provides anonymity to people who want to undergo political change and revolutions where it needs to happen without fearing being found or harmed.”
According to Denis Shestakov, a big data engineer, the public information on the deep web is 400 to 550 times larger than what people think of in terms of the internet, like on Facebook and Google.
It’s worth noting that the deep web and the dark web is a colloquialism, in that the darknet is a deeper, more nefarious part of the deep web.
But what does this mean for opiate users? How easy, safe or practical is it to buy drugs like oxycodone or fentanyl online?
The answer: About as easy as with buying anything online, once you convert money to bitcoin (BTC), which is a cryptocurrency.
This can be done through legitimate services like coinbase where you enter your credit card information and convert any currency to BTC.
Once downloading TOR, it’s just a matter of finding these illegal websites through the browser.
Here’s how: as Potthoff describes, the websites are a little different from a .com or .net in that there are more sequences of numbers and letters tied into the URL. These websites are specific addresses that cannot be accessed through a traditional browser.
“To get those addresses, you can either know them, a friend can tell you, or you can just Google them and they’re available,” Potthoff said. “Reddit is my go to. There are lists of all of these different addresses.”
Once bitcoin and an address is attained, it’s basically like online shopping from there; although overcoming some moral dilemmas is sure to ensue.
In Potthoff’s thinking, buying illicit drugs online is less dangerous than buying on the street and for a number of reasons.
“The sheer anonymity makes it too hard for law enforcement to find you,” Potthoff said. “Law enforcement is going after the suppliers, for the most part, not the end users.”
So even though more laws are broken, like mail fraud and drug trafficking, there’s less risk for the buyer.
When people first hear that they’re giving their address to a drug dealer, they turn away, or try to think of other solutions. Some people will use a P.O. box or even use a “dead drop,” an address that is not their own, often times a foreclosed house. Most sites on the darknet do encrypt buyer's addresses meaning that with just the click of a button the site will only display your address to the distributor.
But who’s to say this distributor is trustworthy? What if what they aren’t selling exactly what they claim?
“The way it works is based on a review system and a trust system,” Potthoff said. “When you make a purchase, there is a review process. You know that when a person has 10,000 shipments you can trust that person a little more.”
This makes it hard for new dealers to break through onto the market, for the fact that senior dealers will have higher trust levels, more reviews and come up at the top of users search within the website.
When a single distributor has thousands of successful transactions and hundreds of reviews on their product, an entirely new level of transparency opens up in the illicit drug market.