Introducing the ‘Cloaked’ Deep Web of Drugs

Drug trade has just gotten more sophisticated, outwitting law enforcement and finding its way to escape the law altogether.

A search engine is merely scratching the surface of internet search. Shall we say, “It has just started?” Today’s internet is so much tangled than we could imagined, all because of the deep web, also called undernet, hidden web or invisible web, a part of the internet that buries information, and unless you’re using a special browser, Tor (The Onion Router), a special network designed to keeping a user’s identity, including his location totally hidden, you cannot access it. But then if someone is using the Tor browser, which can be downloaded free, his internet traffic will be routed from server to server all over the world before finally delivering the content he is looking for. Not only that it does the magic in evasive routing, it also encrypts data a couple of times before getting to him.

Unlocking the door of the deep web where one can get access to a whole lot of illicit drugs, ‘online drug marketplaces,’ which by far the most popular of all was ‘Silk Road’ (*which name was historically and literally taken from a historical network of trade routes in the Han Dynasty, 206 BC – 220 AD and was considered the Amazon.com of drugs), are the new venues for drug consumers to buy and sell their goods. At a time of Silk Road’s closure, it had a total of 13,000 drug listings.

Online drug marketplaces did not stop with Silk Road, as the law enforcement continues its crackdown against many other websites said to be operating in the invisible web.

No matter, illicit drugs buyers and sellers would do anything to keep their businesses going. And according to data released by the Global Drug Survey, more and more consumers are buying drugs online, all data coming from more than 100,000 respondents-consumers of drugs from 50 countries (Survey conducted, November-December 2014), wherein survey revealed they bought drugs on the web for the first time in 2014.

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