Apart from the “visible”, surface web a “deep” and darker web does exist. The dark web relies in the combined availability of crypto currencies and anonymisation to work as a market place for drugs, documents, weapons and illegal items in general.

The dark web has been under scrutiny from legal authorities – both in the US and in other countries, with mixed success: while many web sites have been shut down, other resurface soon after.

The aim of this research is to monitor a selection of dark web resources to gain insights regarding the type of products and services that are sold, and to possibly identify any significant trends.

UEL is funding this research with a small research internship grant; this is a good opportunity to do a survey of a largely unexplored area.