Moving Away from Online Illicit Markets: Analyzing The Rise of Single Vendor Shops On the Dark Net

• In Event: IASOC Presents: Organized Crime Actors and Illicit Markets in Cyberspace

Abstract

Online illicit markets have taken many forms over the past 30 years: Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), newsgroups, discussion forums and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) chat rooms, providing participants with many benefits such as access to a wide pool of possible partners and customers and access to information and tools. They also however attracted the attention of law enforcement agencies who have managed to very publicly take down many online illicit markets. As a result, online illicit market participants have started to shift their activities from markets that are hosted on the open Internet to more secure platforms hosted on the dark net. The aim of this paper is to develop our understanding of the next wave of transformation in online illicit markets, where vendors are choosing to set up their own marketplace where they alone are offering products and services for sale. This study will survey the single vendor online shops to understand the profile of vendors who set up these shops. Their online profiles and activity levels on cryptomarkets will also be analyzed to model which vendor profile can lead to the creation of a single vendor shop.

Author

• David Décary-Hétu, University of Montreal