Those of us who stick to the safe confines of the normal internet may not be aware, but while we're all quietly using Google or Netflix or something on the regular 'ol internet there's a whole parallel internet that's running at the same time. Called 'The Darknet' by critics and media outlets a lot of bad stuff goes down on this bizarro internet, stuff most of us don't want to think about or even know about. Honestly one of the more benign uses of this internet land of shadows is its utility as a place to order drugs from people willing to sell them to you, provided you have the Bitcoin or other digital currency that's the lifeblood of the place. But even though its use as a virtual back alley to buy your uppers or whatever is less worrisome than the other stuff going on... you're still committing a crime and dealing with criminals to do it.
But surely you can trust criminals to not get you into trouble, right? If you can't trust your online drug dealer who's by definition breaking the law and helping you to break the law in the process as a 'business transaction', who can you trust?
The #1 darknet drug market – Incognito – took all of its users' money earlier this month.
— Rebecca Tidy (@DrRebeccaTidy) March 12, 2024
Now the admin is demanding that every user pays a ransom of $200 to $20k by May. Otherwise he will snitch + post their personal info – including order details – online for police to see. pic.twitter.com/odhLj1LPie
Ah. Yes. But what's the worst they could do? After all, they told users that their data wasn't tracked and what data was stored was encrypted and only stored for a bit before being automatically deleted... surely they weren't lying about that, right?
The admin says that the auto-encrypt button didn't work + also that they didn't delete "expired" data, as previously promised. pic.twitter.com/uRjwCbfuij
— Rebecca Tidy (@DrRebeccaTidy) March 12, 2024
Oh.
Why would anyone expect anything different from someone who open a darknet drug market?
— Vanya Wright (@WrightVanya) March 14, 2024
>buy drugs
— AltAc (@AltAcen) March 14, 2024
>don't encrypt you messages
????
Yes if you pay them they will totally do what they promise. 😂
— Buffaloodle (@TheJimbo64) March 14, 2024
Sure they weren't playing on the level before, but now they're definitely gonna be shooting straight right? Right?!
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An incredible moral lesson here. King Solomon couldn't have phrased it better. https://t.co/V6t9log7ji
— Abraham Ash (@Historycourses) March 14, 2024
It's remarkably like something from a druggy hyper online O. Henry story.
Of course let's not pretend that these guys doing the extortion are planning very well on this... after all true anonymity is a hard thing to come by and a person who's really motivated to find out who you are and get their revenge on you will likely be able to figure out who's behind this.
on the one hand you can get a lot of money, on the other hand you have hundreds or thousands of wealthy criminals who want to kill you
— Alex Godofsky (@AlexGodofsky) March 14, 2024
$20k can definitely buy you a hit on a non-prominent target, so it's a bold move.
— Nemesis 2024 (@Nemtastic1) March 14, 2024
Telling a bunch of people who are throwing around large quantities of money on darknet drug markets that their lives would be greatly improved if you were dead seems like a gamble 🧐 https://t.co/TyLYXCGpvQ
— John Markley (@johndrewmarkley) March 14, 2024
Just a bit of a gamble, yes.
Perhaps it's time that we extended the phrase 'there's no honor among thieves' to criminals writ large... after all, if you're the type who's interested in bucking societal rules then the odds seem decent that you're also the type who's less than interested in following standard unspoken rules around best business practices and keeping your word. It sounds like somebody's gonna learn a lesson here, but everyone involved seems to deserve to learn one.
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