Daily Mail - The eBay for drugs: 'Silk Road' website allows UK drug users to buy...

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edgarshade

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The eBay for drugs: 'Silk Road' website allows UK drug users to buy cocaine and heroin by mail order from all over the world
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By Martin Robinson
PUBLISHED: 14:01, 19 November 2012

  • The drugs are being disguised inside packages and being innocently delivered by Royal Mail
  • Silk Road is known as the eBay of the drugs world and allows people to find the best price and also rate the people who sold it to them
  • Royal Mail say they have security procedures in place to intercept this post
  • The site has £14m annual sales worldwide

Class A drugs are being delivered to homes across the UK by Royal Mail to customers who have bought them online like they were using Amazon or eBay, it has been revealed. Ecstasy, heroin, cannabis and cocaine are all on offer on the website Silk Road, and users say it is ‘easier and safer’ than buying drugs from dealers on street corners. UK shoppers can choose their illegal drugs with the click of a mouse and then wait for a neatly packaged parcel, with drugs disguised inside, to fall through their letter box.

Silk Road is an illegal replica online marketplace like eBay, with buyers and sellers, dispute and resolution services and feedback ratings. The website is accessed via a programme called Tor which enables all members to remain anonymous online and uses an 'onion' system to make sure their IP address is always hidden from police. An investigation by an online computer security professor in America earlier this year estimated that Silk Road boasts an annual sales figure of £14million.
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More...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ers-buy-heroin-cannabis-mail-order-world.html
 
this article plays like an advert. It keeps reminding us how easy it is, "users say it is ‘easier and safer’ than buying drugs from dealers on street corners", then repeats this throughout the article..."The website is set up like an online store, allowing customers to find the drugs they want at the best price"....it tells you how to access it, through tor, it also hints that Royal Mail doesnt know what to do, as its pretty much impossible to scan each letter, and get a dog to sniff them all. "The Royal Mail said they never knowingly allowed illegal substances to be delivered by post, but refused to disclose the steps taken to prevent postal dealing."
 
i hate to see articles on it it needs to be kept a secret and this fucking news site looking for attention is going to ruin it for everybody
 
jakejake678 said:
i hate to see articles on it it needs to be kept a secret and this fucking news site looking for attention is going to ruin it for everybody
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That cat was sprung from its bag like 18 months ago, by Gawker.

How did this phrase originate, "Let the cat out of the bag"? Were cats formerly carried in bags? Is the Box a modern innovation?

What did cats do before the invention of boxes, seeing as they're so drawn to them?

 
Thanks Daily Mail, I'm sure you just gave the value of the Bitcoin a little hike!
 
I would not be surprised if the Daily Mail has money in the bitcoin or silk road, maybe they even run it! I've read at least 4 stories from newspapers basically saying exactly how to get to it, the first time I read it I was like 'nah it isnt this easy' and did it and it is actually pretty simps. But then no daily mail reader is actually smart enough to try...
 
Used to be back in the day that piglets were sold in bags. If a pig farmer ran out of piglets but had a cat laying around, he might just put the cat in the bag and try to pass it off as a pig to some poor sucker on the street. However, if the customer was wise enough to look inside before making his purchase... the cat was out of the bag.
 
jakejake678 said:
i hate to see articles on it it needs to be kept a secret and this fucking news site looking for attention is going to ruin it for everybody
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The cat was well and truly out the bag a long time before this article.
 
Aussie article yest-

Dangerous new drugs sold on web 'silk road'

Amy Corderoy
Health Reporter

DANGEROUS new psychoactive drugs are emerging in Australia at a breathtaking rate, say experts conducting groundbreaking research into online drug sales.

The drugs can be toxic to the brain and are often untested on humans, and unsuspecting users are buying them without knowing what they contain or what effect they will have.

About four new chemical substances, and 10 retail outlets selling them to Australians, are emerging each month, Tasmanian researchers have found.

And research by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre has found that the "silk road", an online black-market trading site, is expanding at a similar rate.

A senior lecturer at the University of Tasmania, Raimondo Bruno, said the size of the online drugs market, and the risks posed by the drugs, scared him.

"People are dabbling in a wide range of substances we don't really have a lot of human data on," he said. "Some of these products are known to be neurotoxic, even in animals."

Dr Bruno said there appeared to be two types of sales: specific chemicals, for which more than 78,000 searches originate in Australia each month, and "blended" drugs, for which about 18,500 searches are made.

He said the blended drugs, sold under generic brand names, were particularly unpredictable. "Almost all the drugs we're talking about haven't had any history of human testing -

a couple are failed antidepressants or other drugs," he said."

Because the blends don't state the content, or they state misleading content, you can buy something one week and go back to the same seller and buy the same brand and it can be different."

Dr Bruno will present his research at the Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs Conference in Melbourne on Wednesday.

The executive director of the Australian National Council on Drugs, Gino Vumbaca, said the new drugs posed a significant risk, particularly as long-term health outcomes were unknown.

"A lot of these drugs are marketed as a legal alternative, and people think they're legal and that there's less risk," he said. "They assume it's gone through some kind of pharmaceutical procedure."

He said research indicated most of the new compounds were coming from China and India, and retailers knew if someone was hurt by their products there were plenty more users to take their place.

A researcher at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of NSW,

Joe Van Buskirk, who is also presenting at the conference, said he had found an average of about 15 new sellers a month on the silk road willing to ship drugs to Australia.

The silk road exists on what is known as the ''dark'' or ''hidden'' web, operating on a membership basis and using an alternative currency.

"In order to sell anything, or even buy anything, you have to gain the trust of the forums beforehand,'' Mr Van Buskirk said.

International and domestic sellers sold there, although international sellers offered cheaper prices.

He said the drugs sold tended to be older drugs such as cannabis, which he was surprised to find was the most common product.

Figures from the Australian Customs and Boarder Protection Service show cannabis is the second most common drug caught in cargo and postal importation,

with the number of captures increasing by 86 per cent in the past three years.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci...118-29k71.html
 
Clocktower said:
Used to be back in the day that piglets were sold in bags. If a pig farmer ran out of piglets but had a cat laying around, he might just put the cat in the bag and try to pass it off as a pig to some poor sucker on the street. However, if the customer was wise enough to look inside before making his purchase... the cat was out of the bag.
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Wow that is very random.

Somebody at some point must have lost an eye looking in those bags.
 
I'm wondering if the Royal Mail really does have measures to prevent it. I'm wanting to use the Silk Road some day but that may be a problem if there are getting intercepted.
 
"In order to sell anything, or even buy anything, you have to gain the trust of the forums beforehand,'' Mr Van Buskirk said.
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^ True? Before you even buy anything on SR you have to gain the trust of the forum before hand?
 
I doubt this article has blown the whistle on silk road. It's been around long enough that law enforcement are well aware of it. Its tech side protocols are its only protection really.

I'm just curious what the Royal Mail can possibly do to intercept these packages. It's illegal for them to open them. Do they have dogs sniffing packages?

Here in Canada it's laughably easy to send drugs by the post domestically. It's probably similar over the pond.
 
Ever since Wired/Gizmondo or whoever did the first SR article all its done is made press like this.

At least we can thank TOR for keeping the service running and disguised. Part of the reason SR is still a thing even though LEO knows about it is because the difficulty of profiling all domestic postal mail is way too high. Only obvious bulk shipments are liable to get trapped = imagine trying to search even 1% of mail in a peak season (Christmas time)... not going to happen
 
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