Straight to the main point: it is impossible to completely hide on the darknet
The dark web is teeming with offers of illegal transactions and those wishing to participate in them. It is very stupid to think that law enforcement agencies are ignoring him.
Working on the darknet through Tor, sellers of weapons, drugs and other “forbidden” goods hide their identity. But buyers have the same right. As a result, the seller does not know with whom he is trading. However, buyers are not immune from fake sellers.
The police often conduct “test purchases” . Representatives of law enforcement agencies gain confidence in the sellers, place several orders, and offer to meet.
Then there are pure methods of social engineering, viewing recordings from cameras of delivery services, etc., catching someone in the act. And no high technology. Anyone can turn it in - supposedly a friend, a neighbor, a colleague, a disgruntled ex.
You don't have to look far for examples. The founder of the largest darknet platform Silk Road was caught due to his forgetfulness. Ross Ulbricht was excellent at hiding and encrypting himself, but one day he used the same nickname as on old forums, where he had previously posted a vacancy in search of an employee for another project.
That's all. Ulbricht was arrested in the library, where he was using a laptop on Silk Road under an administrator account. They also identified a package containing nine fake documents that Ulbricht planned to use to rent servers for Silk Road, and established his place of residence.
They gave 2 life sentences, as well as 20, 15 and 5 years for individual episodes. At that time he was 31 years old, and now his life outside of prison is over.
Okay, but there is Tor! Isn't he anonymous?
A primer: in the fall of 2020, the Swedish police, together with colleagues from other countries, conducted the international Operation Titan. Result? 3,000 drug buyers caught on the Tor network.
Here's another example for you to stretch your brain. The Rospravosudiya database found 403 solutions with the word “Tor” inside. Coincidence?
And here is an excerpt from the decision in a case in which a resident of Saratov wanted to buy cocaine on the darknet for bitcoins. Sent the parcel by Russian Post:
The result of the deal is 5 years and 1 month in prison for 4.53 g of cocaine. Here you have protected Tor with the darknet.
The reality is that Tor only hides user activity within its network. As soon as any “tail” of communications creeps beyond these limits, it becomes a gaping piece of evidence, which leads to the unraveling of the above-mentioned criminal cases.
In other words, most often darknetters are caught through external activity . Which starts in Tor and ends in the real world.
But other privacy threats await the darknet user.
How to restore history in Yandex Browser
For those users who prefer to use Yandex.Browser in their work, there are also several effective methods. By the way, they are also suitable for other programs for using the Internet.
The easiest way out is to use a function built into the operating system called “System Restore.” The path to it is quite simple and looks something like this: “Start”. Then it will open in which you will be asked to do a system recovery, after which you can perform a system restore. After restarting the computer, there is a high probability that the deleted history will be restored. However, this method is more suitable in cases where the history was recently erased.
You can also use the backup that exists in the Yandex system. To do this, you will need to go to the additional functions tab of your browser (traditionally it is located in the upper right corner) and select “Synchronization and backup” there. You can use the function as soon as you use your Yandex password.
As you can see, there are many ways to restore history in Yandex Browser, especially considering that the methods described above are also applicable to it, regardless of the type of browser.
Hacking accounts on darknet sites
It is on average easier to hack an account on a site on the darknet than on sites like e-Bay or Amazon. Hackers (both white and black) take advantage of this. They take control of the account and work for some time on behalf of its previous owner.
He may not even have time to warn anyone, because messages sent from the “left” account look especially suspicious on the darknet. And other communication channels in this area are rarely used.
In addition, after hacking an account, the hacker gains access to the owner’s old correspondence. So setting code phrases or asking for facts from previous communication does not help.
In fact, the user's identity is stolen , and a lot can be done on her behalf.
The joke is that the real owner of the account is not able to prove anything without de-anonymization. He won’t show you a personal photo, phone number or social media profiles.
Downloading viruses and malicious scripts
Darknet sites can be infected with viruses. Why not? They are no different from regular websites. For example, a malicious script will allow you to find out the user’s real IP address or intercept his traffic without hacking your account.
The advantage of infecting websites is the massive nature of the attack. If accounts are usually broken one at a time, then here you can immediately get all the traffic or IP addresses of users who visited the site in a certain period of time.
Well, then you can calmly reveal the identities, initiate a case and close the lawbreakers, as if nothing had happened.
Warning
Curiosity is a wonderful thing, but remember that it also “killed the cat”! The Dark Neta topic may seem quite interesting, and the desire to take a look at it in person may be too strong. You just have to remember that this is also quite dangerous. You may click on a corrupted link and your computer may become infected with malware. For this reason, we advise you not to go there unless you have a compelling reason to do so.
If you really want this, make sure to follow security measures to protect yourself and your personal information from any online attacks.
Cryptocurrency transactions are transparent
It's time to dispel the myth about the anonymity of Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies. In the Bitcoin blockchain, every transaction can be traced back to the genesis block (the very first block in the chain). This means that if you know the Bitcoin address of the seller, you can see all the transactions that were made from it.
Accordingly, the second side of the transaction can be calculated. Sometimes it’s enough just to Google addresses to identify the connection between them and real people outside the darknet.
By the way, a US Secret Service employee who participated in the Silk Road investigation was identified after the theft of 13 thousand bitcoins (approximately $108 million at today’s exchange rate). He transferred the bitcoins to the exchange from his wallet to convert them into traditional money. According to the exchange and credit card data, they found him.
You can increase the level of transaction anonymity by using Bitcoin mixers. They mix transactions from different addresses, masking the sender and recipient and breaking one large transaction into many small ones. But they do not provide a 100% guarantee of anonymity.
So what's now?
First of all, recognize that everyone is found on the darknet sooner or later, and cryptocurrencies are not 100% anonymous. Secondly, don’t do anything you’ll regret later. Third, do not connect life on the darknet with life outside the closed network. For example, through the same logins and passwords.
To identify people on the darknet, they use malicious scripts that are embedded in the website code, tracking Bitcoin transactions, and hacking accounts on dark sites. But most often, banal methods of social engineering .
Friends, neighbors and acquaintances rent them out, fake sellers and buyers work, there are posts on forums under nicknames from the darknet, accidents and inattention lead to prison sentences.
It’s better not to go to the darknet, but if you do, know that if anything happens, you can be found.
Just in case, our cool Telegram channel. Come in!
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