When you hear the term ‘Deep Web’, you might think of Silk Road and how its demise has spelled the end of the murky world of illicit online dealings. You’d be wrong, and you’d be wrong by quite some margin.

A new study by security software firm Trend Micro has done some digging, exploring how the Deep Web works, how big it is and what exactly one can find there. Pretty scary stuff, outlined here on CNBC:

It’s around 400 times larger than the visible Web, according to the report. The nature of the Deep Web makes an accurate estimation of size impossible but over the course of two years, Trend Micro collected more than 38 million pieces of content…

Logging on to the Deep Web requires the use of specific software that allows users to communicate anonymously, such as TOR, Freenet, or the Invisible Internet Project…

The biggest advantage of the Deep Web is anonymity; users cannot be tracked by Internet Protocol (IP) addresses or physical locations. Such high levels of privacy are typically conducive to illegal purchases of drugs, firearms, identification, credit cards and even contract killers.

Contract killers you say, what might hiring a helping hand set you back then? Turns out you will still have to fork out about $45 000 (R547 000) to have a ‘low-ranking’ individual taken care of, although a far pricier tag of $180 000 (R2,19 million) applies for a ‘high-rank and political’ figure.

Those amounts will usually be paid out using bitcoins, making it much harder for authorities to track the payments from the source to the receiver.

Perhaps some of South Africa’s more loathsome hitmen-hiring scum might have been advised to look here before having their ‘loved ones’ taken care of.

[source:cnbc]