Our study used opioid keywords and jargons to recognize listings and forum traces related to underground opioid trading activities. Our opioid jargon identification procedure implemented a modified semantic comparison model 19. This model employed a neural network–based embedding technique to analyze the semantics of words in different corpora. In particular, in the semantic comparison model, the size of the input layer was doubled while not expanding either the hidden or the output layer. Hence, every word has 2 vectors, each describing the word’s relations with other words in one corpus. In the meantime, these 2 vectors are still comparable because they are used together in the neural network to train a single skip-gram model for predicting the surrounding windows of context words.
It also runs on the Tor network, which helps keep things anonymous. Of course, not all the popular and widely-used dark web sites and things like marketplaces on the dark net are illegal. Some use them due to privacy concerns, such as journalists talking to informants or whistleblowers, while others may simply want to protect their confidential information from observation or tracking. Nevertheless, most people on the internet do not need to communicate or venture into the dark web. These marketplaces are full of risks (security, legal, ethical issues – all of them). But if you still decide to access these websites, for education or research purposes, make sure you stay cautious.
The dark web was built for anonymity and, as such, it’s often nearly impossible for buyers to know who they are transacting with or where their purchases are being sourced. Drugs may be adulterated, counterfeit, or possibly made by amateurs out of their homes using substandard equipment. These dangers exist on the surface web as well; however, without illicit marketplaces that have built-in escrow and rating systems, there may be a higher likelihood of nondelivery schemes and phishing scams from websites on the surface web. Either way, it can be extremely risky for anyone to attempt to purchase controlled substances or unapproved drugs from the internet. Cybercriminals go on dark web marketplaces to buy and sell illicit goods and services.
Underground Opioid Trading
His 20 years of writing, media, and communications work have included two top-tier universities (USC and UCLA), print and digital magazines, consulting firms, and technology companies. If you want more peace of mind, NordVPN has a dark web monitoring tool you can consider using. This handy feature monitors the dark web for signs that your login details or other personal info have been leaked. What’s more concerning is that most of the time, we don’t know about these flaws, and by the time we try to fix them, we come to know it’s too late. Like ransomware, criminals can buy software and inject your devices with viruses.
Cypher Marketplace
It employed some harm reduction approaches, such as free telemedicine consultations by a medical professional and selective drug-quality tests. To deal with these issues, Silk Road, as well as many darknet marketplaces later, used reviews, ratings and escrow mechanisms together with the centralized administration of the marketplace that could set and enforce rules on the platform. It and other darknet marketplaces organized internal controls to ensure that market transactions could be quick and efficient even when operating in the outlawed space. But reviews and forums give buyers more power, as does the escrow system. By offering so many options, these sites also just make it easier for psychonauts to explore what’s out there. According to Cory, only one online dealer in North America sells truly fentanyl-less heroin anymore.
Since the demise of Wall Street and Dream, two new markets, Empire and Nightmare – which both opened over a year ago – have grown rapidly as users have migrated over from closed sites. Today, Empire has over 28,000 drug listings and Nightmare has over 60,000. In the summer of 2017, Dream market, the second-biggest at that time, had just 48,000 deals. Some of us who use drugs are lucky enough to have physical access to a safe supply.
Money Laundering
Once on a dark web marketplace, users often maintain their anonymity by communicating through encrypted messages, making it difficult for anyone to intercept and read. Furthermore, all marketplaces accept forms of cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin. This digital currency allows buyers to pay while maintaining a degree of privacy protection. Holding payment in escrow often has the added benefit of “tumbling” or “mixing” digital currency; this is a form of money laundering that severs the connection between a cryptocurrency address sending coins and the address to which they are sent. Many people go to the dark web to buy things they can’t find elsewhere, but what if what you’re buying is also trying to harm you?
Your Saved Search
If you accidentally send it to the wrong address, you’ll never get it back. There’s also the problem of the currency’s constantly fluctuating value. Vendors with higher feedback ratings can get away with asking for “early finalization.” This system (along with the reviews and forums) incentivizes them to sell what they say they’re selling; ripping people off has consequences. In our study, we found that 23.78% (9896/41,614) listings and traces were identified with the help of 58 opioid jargons (Table 2). Among them, suboxone and subutex medicines are most frequently mentioned by 2917 times in listings and traces in 10 platforms, followed by roxy series (ie, roxy, roxi, roxies, and roxys) with 2022 times and Lean with 1256 times.
Explicit And Illegal Content
They also typically use a virtual private network (VPN), which creates a secure “tunnel” for sending and receiving data across shared or public networks by configuring their computing devices as if they were directly connected by a private network. Those unfamiliar with the dark web may wonder how it operates and whether it poses a greater threat in the opioid crisis than the surface web. LegitScript investigative analysts explored this issue earlier this year when we conducted in-depth research on dark web opioid sales on behalf of the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies (CSIP). Our investigation culminated in the report The State of Opioid Sales on the Dark Web. To turn it on, just go to the “Settings” and then the “Tools” section of the NordVPN app and activate “Dark Web Monitoring.” In the end, it’s all about staying one step ahead. The more proactive you are, the better you can protect yourself against identity theft and other cyber threats.
Awazon Market
To reduce opioid-related mortality, there is a pressing need to understand the supply and demand for the product; however, no prior research that provides a greater understanding of the international opioid supply chain has been conducted. Darknet or dark web marketplaces are a hidden part of the internet that surface web users can’t access; they can only be accessed with special anonymity software called Tor. Many people (mostly criminals) use these sites to perform illegal transactions such as selling banned goods and services. The results provide insight into opioid trading in the anonymous markets and forums and may prove an effective mitigation data point for illuminating the opioid supply chain.
Note that we should not overestimate the number of suppliers and buyers given the number of IDs found in this research, but we regarded it as the upper-bounded number of the opioid suppliers and buyers. This is because the same user could have different IDs, and the same ID in different marketplaces can point to different users. Owing to the anonymity of the underground marketplaces and forums, there exists no ground truth to link users with their IDs. Dark web markets have exploded in scale and reach in 2025, becoming the most dangerous hubs for trading drugs, stolen data, and hacking tools. These anonymous marketplaces—operating mainly on the Tor network—are now a primary threat vector for businesses and cybersecurity professionals.
While the dark web offered a safer supply of some substances, others appeared more reliable when purchased offline. Freshtools is a unique marketplace in that it does not only provide the stolen data, but it allows criminals to purchase MaaS which can cause further damage to the victims. It is one of the most active and up to date markets and always provides new and updated malware and data. Torzon Market has established itself as a significant player in the darknet ecosystem, offering a secure, user-centric platform for anonymous trading.
In addition, we did not observe big changes in the top opioid commodity origins from 2014 to 2020. Particularly, as shown in Table 8, the United States and the United Kingdom are always in the top 5 advertised origins among years. Our team searched the dark web and put together a list of the most active dark web marketplaces in order to assist you in monitoring illegal trade of products, cybercrime activity, and dark web trends in the dark web space.
What Do People Sell Or Exchange On Darknet Markets?
Imagine an underground version of your favorite online marketplace, somewhere hidden, exclusive, and often operating outside legal boundaries. It is similar to an online store, except it’s not the type you’ll find with a quick Google search. Usually, it takes a few weeks for buyers to transfer to alternative or new sites. When cops shut that site, they knew users would migrate to any service they could – and many fed to Hansa market, which the cops had seized and allowed to continue operating so they could capture user data. At the time of writing, Samsara features just 2,048 drug listings.
- This tallies with the idea that when buyers are often able to leave reviews on dark-web marketplaces, vendors there may be more accountable than their in-person counterparts.
- Purchases through links on our pages may yield affiliate revenue for us.
- Be careful in order to buy drugs legally, you will need to buy the right doses.
- Imagine trusting a site where you’ve been buying or selling for months, and everything seems legit.
- Those suppliers kept using the same IDs for years to gain reputation and familiarity from buyers.
After that, an opioid buyer often leaves review comments under the product listing or discusses the purchasing experience in the forum (step 12). Overdoses from opioids, a class of drugs that includes both prescription pain relievers and illegal narcotics, account for more deaths in the United States than traffic deaths or suicides. Overdose deaths involving heroin began increasing in 2000 with a dramatic change in pace, and as of 2014, 61% of drug overdoses involved some type of opioid, inclusive of heroin 1. Deaths involving fentanyl nearly doubled from the previous year’s rate in 2014, 2015, and 2016 2.
