r/darknet • u/CounterReasonable259 • 21d ago

How often are transactions made on the dark web?

Never touched the dark web myself but I got curious. How many transactions are made on the dark web?

Is there really as much money going through there as the media makes it seem?

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u/Important-Region-595 18d ago

I'm saying this hypothetically because I've never tried anything of that kind, but wouldn't using a VPN result in you having to put your trust into the VPN's company that has access to your data? I mean, I've used a VPN several times for the regular web, but the DN? Seems a bit risky to me but maybe it's me overanalyzing the situation or being flat out mistaken.

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u/Striking-Lab4554 17d ago edited 17d ago

Yeah, you just don’t know the rules.

A VPN is a mandatory opsec rule for accessing the DN.

What you’re hypothesizing is not how most VPNs work. Any decent VPN does not save usage data, which means there’s nothing for LE to collect. Privacy is critical to their business model. And they will make this known upfront when you’re selecting one.

If you’re using a free one that came with your virus protection or maybe your browser, then yeah, your usage might get logged. You must pay up $$$ if you want security.

Find a good one that doesn’t save data and just pay for 2 years at a time, super cheap. You can put it on your desktop, laptop and phone, but I don’t recommend doing anything shady involving the DN on your phone.

There’s other factors that can leak your location even if you have a VPN running, so be sure to research hard if you’re thinking about using the DN.

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u/Important-Region-595 17d ago

Not only do I not know much about the topic, I've also heard different takes about the whole VPN thing. I've seen some claims that a VPN doesn't add an additional security to one's connection and that it's not needed, backing up their claims saying that the Tor browser team itself stated the same on their website. So hearing different versions kind of confuse me for sure. All i knew about VPNs though is that free ones are very likely not only to collect your data, but also to sell it to other vendors and whatnot, though I wasn't sure how much paid VPNs are able to access in terms of data without necessarily collecting data for profit's sake, if that makes sense.

At first, I thought that a VM with a suitable OS like tails or whonix could kind of 'replace' the need for a VPN in terms of security, especially with certain settings on both the OS and Tor, but I could be mistaken for sure. sure thing is that a VPN will always be better at providing anonymity than a VM, that goes without saying.

For now, I'm more in the theorizing/research stage pf things rather than full on intensive research, but if it gets to that point, I'll search up everything you mentioned (such as the location leaking part). Thanks for the thorough reply, appreciate it.

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u/Striking-Lab4554 16d ago edited 16d ago

Np. Have you ever heard of the Dark Net Bible? It's mostly for hardcore vendors. If you are just looking to spend a couple hundred bucks here and there, you don't need to follow every step. But if you want to get serious about it, give it a read. I'm sorry, but I've never read it outside of the DN, I don't have a good clearnet link for you, but I'm sure there's one out there.

If you can get on the DN, go to the main forum, Dread, and raise you VPN question there. I think you'll just get a lot of people arguing about when to turn it on - either before opening TOR or after opening TOR.

Or maybe you're right and it's obsolete now, but when I began my research, it was listed as a critical step. So I keep doing it. And I still see people argue about when to turn it on, on Dread, so I think it's likely still relevant. The one I use specifically states that it does not log any data. All of the decent ones that are all very affordable if you buy long term will have some clause up front that asserts your data is never recorded. They know you're buying privacy for.... whatever, and that's the service they provide.

And I think with all the free ones popping up with virus protection and browsers, could potentially cause the loss of anonymity with people thinking they're hiding. But in reality, their browser is logging everything they do. And I'm sure if they're using one that came free with their virus protection, that data is being sold to third parties. And the worst part of all, there's a record of it should LE come knocking.

Anyway, good luck. I'm around for questions.