Author: Ty Pendlebury / Source: CNET
Two of the three largest dark web markets are closed for business.
The Department of Justice and Europol announced Thursday that they have shut down AlphaBay and Hansa, two massive marketplaces on the dark web that served hundreds of thousands of customers trying to get their hands on illegal goods online.
While you or I can easily buy groceries, electronics and clothes online, when it comes to finding drugs, weapons and stolen identities, things can get a little more complicated. Merchants of contraband hide out on the dark web, a hidden part of the internet that you can only access through special browsers like Tor. There, buyers and sellers are anonymous, and so is the currency, with most transactions happening through bitcoin.
AlphaBay alone had 200,000 customers and more than 40,000 sellers peddling illegal goods, making it the largest takedown for a dark web marketplace ever. The website had 100,000 listings for sale when the governments took it down. In comparison, Silk Road, one of the most notorious dark web markets, had 14,000 listings when the FBI shut down the site four years ago. Hansa was the third largest dark web market when it shut down.
“I believe that because of this operation, the American people are safer from the threat of identity fraud and malware, and safer from deadly drugs,” attorney…
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