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German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

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Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#141

Post by ath92 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #109
Tepix wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol is a big problem in Germany: 3 million people with alcohol issues and 74,000 yearly deaths.² Weed is considered less of a problem by the scientific community. The logical conclusion: Increase taxes on alcohol and legalize weed. -- ² https://www.dhs.de/suechte/alkohol/zahlen-daten-fakten

> Increase taxes on alcohol Illegal production of homebrewn alcohol is a thing and has been for centuries. Raising taxes at will does not mean that everyone will, unhappily, continue to buy expensive alcohol in the store. There is a limit after which people will start to produce their own moonshine, which is less safe than whatever you buy legally. Or start drinking various chemicals that resemble alcohol. (Window cl…

And yet Scandinavian countries have had great success by raising the price and limiting the availability of store-bought alcohol.

I think this is similar to some UX patterns we see in software: most people will go with the default option because it is easier. Raising the amount of effort needed for something means fewer people will end up doing it.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#142

Post by FDSGSG »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #68
thinkloop wrote: post #2

In theory it is possible to run a bitcoin tor marketplace anonymously, but in practice, given a long enough timeline, mistakes will happen and chances of getting caught approach 100%. I wonder what mistakes were made here.

Exit scams are also a problem whose likelihood increases with time. Either the fed's bust in and take the user's money, or the market makers take off with the user's money, or both sides wait for the pot to get bigger. It kinda seems like fees and taxes, but instead of paying them on every transaction the users gamble on whether they'll be the one stuck with the bill. I'm also interested in the particular opsec failu…

>I'm also interested in the particular opsec failure for this iteration

The person running this site did not have anything near the technical skills required to operate a darknet market.

Instead of developing his own, he used a very clunky public script for his market https://github.com/5auth/eckmar-source

All of the early posts by /u/darkmarket on Dread were in /d/darknetmarketsAU. Very early on other users figured out his previous handle he used as a drug vendor.

DarkMarket was plagued by repeated IP leaks of its servers, and had its servers seized in the 2019 Cyberbunker raid.

https://twitter.com/SttyK/status/1349034993893265408

https://twitter.com/5auth/status/1349358474476613633

https://twitter.com/SttyK/status/1349261670477045760

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#143

Post by dannyw »

leoplct wrote: post #139

It is very easy for the buyer to get caught: - Buy BTC from an exchange with KYC and then send it to the seller (police) - Receive the product by post or collect it at a pick-up point where the seller (police) knows the address. What strategies can the buyer follow to protect his privacy and trust the seller?

Use monero. There’s a reason why the second largest (now the largest, I guess) market only takes monero now.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#144

Post by bouncycastle »

skinkestek wrote: post #33
seibelj wrote: post #23

No matter what anyone says, I believe with every fiber of my being that simple drug dealing is a victimless crime. Free people choose to purchase and consume drugs to their own detriment (benefit). All violence related to the sale of drugs is ancillary to the fact some drugs (but not others - alcohol, marijuana, caffeine for starters) are illegal. https://freeross.org/

> I believe with every fiber of my being that simple drug dealing is a victimless crime. Quick, ugly counterexample: Date rape drugs. You can of course say that the crime is on whoever uses it but criminal neglect is a thing. Somewhat more nuanced example: Vulnerable people are still given highly addictive drugs as "marketing" from dealers. This isn't something all of those victims have chosen, so I'd say it isn't vi…

The seized darknet website had a ToS prohibiting date rape drugs such as GBH. Is this common among darknet marketplaces, or just to this one?

Source: https://twitter.com/DarkDotFail/status/1299444442584158208/p...

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#145

Post by yspeak »

brazzy wrote: post #125
that_guy_iain wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience talking to the people whose job it is to provide support and services to those who abuse substances. Most experts in substance abuse normally say Alcohol is the worst of all the substances. With many stating, it causes more havoc in families on scale than heroin. More people die because of Alcohol, not just from drinking it but from drink drivers, drunken fights, etc. The general violence caused by…

But note that all those statement are about the amount of harm in an environment where alcohol is legal, cheaply available in every supermarket, widely advertized, and its consumption socially accepted, even expected . Can you really say in good conscience that other drugs wouldn't be worse if they became equally ubiquitous?

This obviously.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#146

Post by FDSGSG »

thinkingemote wrote: post #95
viraptor wrote: post #8

> A total of at least 320,000 transactions were carried out via the marketplace That's the total from 1-2 years (I can't find when in 2019 did they start). If that's the biggest right now, I'm surprised how small the markets are.

They also had 20 servers seized which also gives an indication on size.

Odds are most of that server capacity was used for DDoS protection, not for handling legitimate traffic.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#147

Post by bluescrn »

transpostmeta wrote: post #135
inglor_cz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Increase taxes on alcohol Illegal production of homebrewn alcohol is a thing and has been for centuries. Raising taxes at will does not mean that everyone will, unhappily, continue to buy expensive alcohol in the store. There is a limit after which people will start to produce their own moonshine, which is less safe than whatever you buy legally. Or start drinking various chemicals that resemble alcohol. (Window cl…

My solution: Increase taxes on all alcoholic beverages. Make pharmacies able to sell 20% by volume alcohol mixed with water that is drinkable in non-branded, medical-looking bottles. Addicts with little money can buy that and mix it with fruit juice or whatever, and everyone else buys the expensive real stuff.

Alcohol is big business, though. Forcing pricess too high would be the end of most pubs/bars and many restaurants. And we're losing many of them already due to Covid.

If taxes were really high, I suspect that home brewing would be become far more popular, too.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#148

Post by Tenoke »

leoplct wrote: post #139

It is very easy for the buyer to get caught: - Buy BTC from an exchange with KYC and then send it to the seller (police) - Receive the product by post or collect it at a pick-up point where the seller (police) knows the address. What strategies can the buyer follow to protect his privacy and trust the seller?

1. Always encrypt your messages personally before messaging a seller.

2. Pick trustworthy sellers with a long history and good reviews.

3. Use monero (or shuffle your btc).

4. Make a new account with a unique username for every purchase.

5. Order only domestically.

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#149

Post by [deleted] »

dannyw wrote: post #143
leoplct wrote: post #139

It is very easy for the buyer to get caught: - Buy BTC from an exchange with KYC and then send it to the seller (police) - Receive the product by post or collect it at a pick-up point where the seller (police) knows the address. What strategies can the buyer follow to protect his privacy and trust the seller?

Use monero. There’s a reason why the second largest (now the largest, I guess) market only takes monero now.

[deleted]

Re: German police take down 'world's largest darknet marketplace'

#150

Post by [deleted] »

inglor_cz wrote: post #109
Tepix wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol is a big problem in Germany: 3 million people with alcohol issues and 74,000 yearly deaths.² Weed is considered less of a problem by the scientific community. The logical conclusion: Increase taxes on alcohol and legalize weed. -- ² https://www.dhs.de/suechte/alkohol/zahlen-daten-fakten

> Increase taxes on alcohol Illegal production of homebrewn alcohol is a thing and has been for centuries. Raising taxes at will does not mean that everyone will, unhappily, continue to buy expensive alcohol in the store. There is a limit after which people will start to produce their own moonshine, which is less safe than whatever you buy legally. Or start drinking various chemicals that resemble alcohol. (Window cl…

[deleted]
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