Has anyone ever actually done a survey of what's available on these markets. I don't doubt there are a lot of drug offerings but I feel like most of the "It's all drugs!" assertions come authority figures who tend to say that about a lot of new things.
A recent article by CoinDesk [0] quotes the total number of listings on each of the biggest dark markets (before the seizures) and the number of listings for drugs; drugs made up a large majority of listings on all markets except Evolution, about half of whose listings are for drugs.
(The numbers come from a report [1] by the Digital Citizens Alliance; the report says the count is from January 2014, but says nothing further about methodology.)
The markets that sell weapons have significantly lower proportions of drug listings, so presumably many of the non-drug listings on those markets are for weapons; much of the rest is likely exploits, credit card numbers, forgeries, etc.
With digital goods it's probably easier to illegally copy them from victim's machine after they've been (legitimately) purchased, so they are more likely obtained via password grabbers.
I imagine stealing paysites' credentials is a sort of a bike theft of the criminal web - low profit, low risk.
I never figured it out. It is tempting, but nothing I would ever risk myself. There are also a ton of new scams such as "buy this MacBook pro for full price, cancel the order then send me $300 in bitcoin and I'll send it to you" (I know I butchered that process)
The thing is my question would be how stupid it would have to be for things like spotify -- which, being streaming media, is shitty to run across a VPN, and if you were using carded goods on your home computer, traceable back to you easily, when the dispute for unauthorized use hits..
At least here in Norway some thinks the government shall prosecute people based solely on the fact that they received a letter containing a forbidden substance. The idea appears to be that one would only spend money ordering a forbidden item to oneself (a false logic if you ask me. I have received gift in the mail several times. From Amazon, not drugs through).
If the government start to prosecute based on receiving only, one interesting counter measure would be to create a random darknet shopper that also send the product to a random addresses, thus offering plausible deniability to everyone receiving illicit substances by mail.
Heh this reads like the contents of Hunter S Thompson's gym bag for a long weekend. Of course he would need two sets of a fireman's master key-chain.
This is really interesting though. Maybe after a while they could exclude drugs. I find the most interesting thing about these darknets to be the random and obscure stuff people are selling. Like from the second fireman's key-chain console, where it lists among other things for sale, a "TOP VPN LIST that don't keep logs," an "nba playoff pick," a "BANK DROP ONLY 20% FEE," and a "Request Custom Hotel Booking."
Convenience and safety. Someone can pay $0.99 and avoid the trouble of tracking down all of the pdfs themselves as well as avoiding accessing a bunch of other sites.
Do those shoes glow in the dark? Other than that, I don't get it. You can have a random shopper in your life just by getting married (goes for either sex; also, I wouldn't want to discriminate against other forms of relationships).
