The internet is a vast and bottomless virtual land. As much as it brings joy and connection and business, it also had secret, dark places that can lead us all to some nefarious decisions and unintended consequences. Sometimes all you want to do is order a vintage t-shirt, the next thing you know.... the FBI is knocking on your door.
Redditor u/BusinessOnion wanted to know who has meandered around the side of the internet that isn't particularly safe and lived to tell the tale by asking..... [Serious] Dark Web users of Reddit, was there ever a point in your use that you felt you were genuinely in danger? What happened?
Notice of Fear
ill kill you ben stiller GIFGiphyI once bought a bit of weed and I received a blackmail letter threatening me with awful things (like sending CP and calling the police) if I didn't send 1 btc (1000$ at the time). I was scared sh!tless but nothing ever happened. Always check the reviews before buying anything!
The High Note
One time I got twice the amount of drugs that I actually ordered. Was paranoid for about 2 hours and then I just got really high and it was fine.
Once a friend ordered a "sample pack" of 10 Pills from a new vendor and got shipped 1k pills. Everyone who ordered got this surprise. This led to friends devastating addiction to Xanax which led to black tar and meth which led to a rock bottom that you only read about. He's been clean and off the dark web for 4 years now though.
Damn Bits
A friend of mine used to use Silkroad on the Darknet when Bitcoin was $10 a pop. He placed a tleast 100 orders through it and never had any issues.
It's a shame he didn't keep all the Bitcoin he bought because he would have been a millionaire now.
I made a TON of money from it, but at that time in my life money = drugs, so I have 0 from it.
Paranoid
Scared Boy Meets World GIFGiphyIn college some friends and I ordered a 100 sheet of acid, using bitcoin, to our college P.O. Boxes. We got pretty terrified when it didn't arrive when it should've. We thought it was found by USPS, our own mail service, or the DEA; we were paranoid. Turns out they just shipped it later than they said. We got our 100 tabs but that was a VERY stressful week and a half for all of us.
Mary Jane Issues
Had a buddy who used to order weed. The distributer got busted and the postal service let him know there was a suspicious package for him. He could either pick it up or it would be destroyed.
Getting an illegal package addressed to you leaves you with plausible deniability if you've purchased it anonymously and covered your tracks. You can say, "No thanks, I don't want anything to do with that because I have no idea what it is," and that'll be that, you just have to suck up the sunk costs. Trying to pick it up after you've been told it was suspicious and being held will earn you a nice talk with the authorities.
Lasers
I was trying to buy those super cool laser pointers and I got a random message saying I know where you live. I noped out of that sight straight away.
My father was issued a laser pointer by the US Army that had been shown to cause skin cancer if u pointed it at someone for too long so there r some pretty crazy laser pointers out there.
Choo-Choo
Came across a chan style site. Every post was about trains. Wouldn't say i felt in danger, but i felt so out of the loop that i was missing something that I just got off.
I immediately thought this too. They're all there innocently chatting about trains and this guy stumbles across it like "wtf, this is some crazy stuff."
big brother
Suspicious Pop Tv GIF by Big Brother After DarkGiphyEverything feels government owned.
I used to frequent drug sites. They would go down for weeks at a time. Then pop up again, have weird prices. Sellers were different.
It made the dark web feel like a labyrinth more than a ruleless wasteland.
Fading Out
I've used the dark web once or twice. Scariest thing was when my screen went black for a few moments and turned back on. Wasn't anything big, just my display cable messing up, but it did give me the creeps. As for dark or disturbing stuff, I've only found a list of random addresses. The dark web really has a lot of stigma associated with it.
For the most part it's just people curious about the dark web or people trying to scam you or sell you drugs. You have to do a lot of looking to find the really screwed up stuff. You're more likely to find dark web type crap on Reddit or YouTube than the actual dark web.
Beware
red flag GIF by Steve Harvey TVGiphyBe safe boys and girls! Don't give out your information or communicate with others. And if you plan on purchasing anything, use a secure Linux OS like Tails, use private keys, connect to a public wifi spot (not your house), encrypt all messages, use multi signature markets so your chances of losing your Bitcoin lessens, escrow preferably, never send your bitcoins from a wallet attached to you directly to the seller, tumble your coins first. And when the package arrives, don't open it for a few days. A friend of mine gave me all this info and told me I should help u guys out.
Code Errors...
I own a fairly rare car that had a rare error code. I looked it up on Google and there was only one other person on the car maker's forum that had the same error. And this guy took months and months going back and forth between car shops and the forum thread to try to get the issue fixed. Everyone on the forum was pitching in to try to help him. So I kept going through this long forum thread to try to figure out if he ever fixed it. And suddenly there's no more replies from the guy.
Everyone was scratching their heads for a while. We thought he had maybe gotten the issue fixed and didn't bother to update us on it. Then one day, a news article popped up about a really rich guy who died in a Thai jail cell. And then we connected the two stories and they matched up. The same make and model of the car in the news article matched up with his car. And they were both claiming to be in Thailand at the time.
So what happened was that that same guy who was still talking on the forums got raided by the Thai police around the same time he stopped replying to the forum. Turns out that he was running one of the biggest dark web marketplaces where drugs were being sold and exchanged. It had something like $1 million in revenue per day and he was hiding out in Thailand while living in luxury. They found him dead in his jail cell a few days later. They claim he died of "suicide".
I'm Out
cardi b ok GIF by PepsiGiphyIdk if it was the "dark web" but accidentally came across a website that was basically just Pornhub but for gore. I saw a couple seconds of a man with his hands already chopped off and noped the heck out. I had to take a break from the Internet for a couple of days.
Don't Do Drugs
Every time. Remember that the person you just bought drugs from knows:
- Your address.
- That you have drugs in your house.
- There's probably evidence of dark web use in your finances/computer/trash.
They can rat you out with impunity just because they're feeling malevolent. They also could just get caught and be careless with destroying ex customer information, so it hangs over my head to this day.
"love letter"
There's hitmen, human trafficking and snuff films and such but a vast majority of these sites are scams asking you to send them bitcoin. A small portion of users on the dark web would be there for this sort of stuff. However, buying drugs online is quite popular and widespread. Single vendors can have $500,000+ in lifetime sales.
It's quite safe to use. You use PGP to encrypt your address so only the seller of the drugs has access to your private info. If your package is seized, LE have no proof you ordered it unless they seize your computer and you have that information stored on it, you can use tails/USB to avoid this.
Even if your packages get seized, you'll often get a "love letter" saying what they seized and there is no follow up after that.
Chatter
Kinda dark... I wanted to install Windows 7 on my old PC so I installed the .iso file from some website and everything was working good for like 1 hour but then porn started appearing on my screen and I was like wtfff. Chat box opened and camera turned on. He told me I have nice eyes and after that I just turned off the PC and did a clean install of Windows 10.
Whoops....
santa clarita diet drey barrymore GIF by NETFLIXGiphyDon't frequent it a lot but once i accidentally left my browser in full screen and a stranger in a chat room asked me if my curved monitor was nice, freaked me out a bit.
Weird Sites...
I've never personally felt I was in actual danger so to speak, since I take proper precautions, but early on I did accidentally come across a site/forum while exploring that was filled with crazy photos of women people had been hit and then knocked out or killed. Shut down my browser pretty quick after that, but felt uneasy for a long time after.
by golly, it worked.....
I actually learned how to access the dark web by listening to NPR. They had a segment where an author who was writing a book about it basically gave step by step instructions on how to do it. I did everything he said and, by golly, it worked.
Truthfully, it was pretty underwhelming. Mostly just drugs and counterfeit items (passports, money, etc.).
I did find some weapons with the serial numbers scratched off (pistols and shotguns), but nothing that would start World War 3. I also saw a couple ads for hitmen, but they seemed pretty hokey and were most likely, undercover cops.
I never felt in danger, but I have never gone back because there's nothing I really want from there. No government agents have kicked down my door, either.
Sketchy not Scary
The scariest moment for me was when I stumbled upon a creepy ARG and thought it was something much more sinister, until I found out it was just an ARG
The dark web isn't really that scary. It has been romanticized and exaggerated by creepy pastas, TV shows and etc.
EDIT: I know stuff like The Red Room and CP exist on the dark web. it's just that it is not that common; most are scams or require a membership. The common user won't find much, but you will find something really offputting if you dig enough.
beware the lull....
Warning Sign GIFGiphyThe only real difference between the internet you and I are using right now and the dark web is that you need special software or configurations to access it.
You have plenty of opportunities of finding bad crap on the regular web. With that in mind, I'd say that the regular web is more dangerous since it lulls you into a sense of security. I mean, most people these days have a significant amount of their personal information on there. The dark web you're likely going to have a sense to be more anonymous.
Personally, I just used it for playing a WoW private server back in the day since the hosts didn't want to get a C&D from blizzard.
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