The Unexposed Secret Of World Market Onion

The darknet – a wild west for fake coronavirus ‘cures '? The reality is more difficult (and regulated)

The coronavirus pandemic has spawned reports of unregulated health products and fake cures being obsessed about the dark web. These generally include black market PPE, illicit medications including the widely touted "miracle" drug chloroquine, and fake COVID-19 "cures" including blood supposedly from recovered coronavirus patients.

These dealings have once more focused public attention with this little-understood part of the internet. Nearly a decade because it started being used on a significant scale, the dark web continues to be a lucrative safe haven for traders in a selection of illegal goods and services, especially illicit drugs.

Black market trading on the dark web is carried out primarily through darknet marketplaces or cryptomarkets. They are anonymised trading platforms that directly connect buyers and sellers of a variety of illegal goods and services – much like legitimate trading websites such as for instance eBay.

So just how do darknet marketplaces work? And how much illegal trading of COVID-19-related products is happening via these online spaces?

Not a free-for-all

There are greater than a dozen darknet marketplaces in operation. Protected by powerful encryption technology, authorities around the globe have largely failed to contain their growth. A steadily increasing proportion of illicit drug users all over the world report sourcing their drugs online. In Australia, we have one of the world's highest concentrations of darknet drug vendors per capita.

Despite popular belief, cryptomarkets are not the "lawless spaces" they're often presented as in the news. darkode market (www.autogm.it) prohibitions exist on all mainstream cryptomarkets. Universally prohibited goods and services include: hitman services, trafficked human organs and snuff movies.

Although cryptomarkets lie outside the realm of state regulation, each one is established and maintained by a central administrator who, alongside employees or associates, is responsible for the market's security, dispute resolution between buyers and sellers, and the charging of commissions on transactions.

Administrators are also ultimately responsible for determining so what can and can't be sold on the cryptomarket. These decisions are likely informed by:

the attitudes of the surrounding community comprising buyers and sellers
the extent of consumer demand and supply for many products
the revenues a niche site makes from commissions charged on transactions
and the perceived "heat" that could be attracted from police force in the trading of particularly dangerous illegal goods and services.

Experts delve to the dark web

A report from the Australian National University published last week discusses several hundred coronavirus-related products available across twelve cryptomarkets, including supposed vaccines and antidotes.

While the study confirms some unscrupulous dark web traders are indeed exploiting the pandemic and seeking to defraud naïve customers, this information should really be contextualised with several important caveats.

Firstly, the number of dodgy covid-related products on the market on the dark web is relatively small. According to the research, they account for about 0.2% of most listed items. The overwhelming majority of products were those we are already familiar with – particularly illicit drugs such as for example cannabis and MDMA.

Also, while the analysis centered on products listed on the market, these are usually listings for products that either do no exist or are listed with the particular intention to defraud a customer.

Thus, the actual sale of fake coronavirus "cures" on the dark web is likely minimal, at best.