Underground 101 - The Dark Side Of The World
So you're probably a teenager (age 12-21) wandering about in the dark corners of the internet. Or you are a young guy/girl (age 21-28) just getting familiar with life's ups and downs and dreaming of getting rich overnight. Or maybe you are in your mid life (age 28-40) and are tired of your shitty job/life. Age 40 and above are probably already busy in their monotonous lives and don't give a $h!t about this article. Whichever one you are, it's pretty alluring to get involved in the dark side of the world to make a quick fortune and escape all your lives' worries at once.
Many people will tell you not to get into this gutter. It will ruin your life bla bla bla.... I leave all that responsible judgement to you. I will merely be stating the facts/things that I have experienced in my personal life.
In this post, I am going to give you an introduction to 10 kinds of illicit/illegal/NSFW activities that exist in this beautiful world that we live in. You won't believe the things people do for Money, Sex and Revenge. Corporatism is defined as the control of a state or organization by large interest groups and it has established roots so deep in our souls that we have forgotten what love, kindness and charity feel like. Anyway, let's get to it already :-
1. Duplicacy -
Ever wondered why your favorite console controller is not functioning as expected or why it feels different than the one that came in the box? Its probably a rip off made in China for 1/10th the price of the original and sold to you in the disguise of a discount. Duplicate products range from fake batteries, phones (even iphones), fake brand products of Nike, Adidass etc. , fake washing detergents, cosmetics, toothpaste, clothes and so much more. You get the idea. Almost everything you can think of can be duplicated. But what seems to be evil and malpractice on one side might be putting food in someone's mouth in an underdeveloped economy. Factories that manufacture such products employ thousands of workers (on minimum wages of course) and hence create jobs and contribute to the GDP of the nation (in most cases this "nation" is China). Now that we are talking of putting food in our mouth, let's get to the next point. We shall discuss more about Duplicacy in detail in a later post.
2. Food Adulteration/Fake Food -
With the recent popularity this subject has gained, you've probably already heard about this. Food adulteration is an addition of another substance to a food item in order to increase the quantity of the food item in raw form or prepared form, which may result in the loss of actual quality of food item. Cases of food adulteration date back to Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages ! If you live in a developed country, chances of consuming adulterated food are quite slim. But in underdeveloped nations, the subject has become a nuisance. About 2.2 Million people die each year by consuming substandard food. Fake Food is also something that has came into existence in recent years. Hundreds of accounts of plastic rice being imported from China have surfaced and many have been arrested for this hideous crime. We shall discuss more about Food Adulteration/Fake Food in a later post.
3. Trafficking rings -
Trafficking is a broad subject in that it can range from human trade to distribution of illegal drugs and arms to even bio weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. Although drug/arms trafficking are debatable subjects implicitly invoking freedom to one's activities for privacy, self defense and recreational uses, the other kinds of trafficking are more hideous crimes committed by anti social elements and psychopaths for the sole purpose of money or terrorism. Human trafficking activities like Forced Labor, Forced Prostitution, Sex Trafficking, Debt Bondage, Child (Sex/Labor) Trafficking are the most inhumane crimes that are occurring on our planet despite our democracies and police states. More on this in a later post.
4. Credit Card Fraud Industry -
The Carding Industry is undoubtedly the largest underground and illegal markets in the world. The industry has its roots in the physical as well as the digital world. Phishing Attacks, Card Skimmers, ATM Malwares, Fraud telecallers are just a few broad headings one comes across in this industry. Millions if not Billions of dollars are lost to credit card fraud each year.
Physical frauds mainly comprise of attaching a skimmer to the ATM/POS machine along with a method to grab the victim's PIN (either a camera, or a person standing behind them, or even the waiter in a restaurant eyeing your PIN details). The information from the skimmer is copied into a flash memory just like one in your phone's memory card and is referred to as a dump. This dump, along with your PIN is capable of sucking all your money in a matter of seconds.
Digital frauds mainly include phishing attacks where a hacker creates a fake website like Amazon and makes you enter your CC details. You think you're buying something from Amazon but you're only giving away your details for free. Other digital attacks involve putting keyloggers and malwares on your PC that can send each and every keystroke to a remote server controlled by a hacker, ultimately compromising your CC details.
We will go into great detail on this subject in an upcoming post.
5. Assassinations -
Make no mistake ASSASSINATION IS MURDER. Just like all other crimes, assassinations have been around for centuries. While the targets in the ancient times were primarily political figures like Julius Caesar, in the modern era it could be anyone from your child to a bank truck driver who's job it is to fill up the ATMs. Assassinations are carried out by hitmen who advertise their services on the deep/dark web. If you are not familiar with deep web, I suggest you do your own research about it. Think of the regular web as the tip of an iceberg and the deep web as the real deal that is beneath the water and has the capability to sink a ship like Titanic. That's the power of deep web. You can find tons of videos on YT detailing how to surf the deep web safely. What has left everyone in shock are the cases where journalists and activists have been murdered for exposing mafias and corruption. The deep web also offers a safe platform for these activists to share their thoughts with each other while remaining anonymous to the high level criminals/governments.
The assassination of John F. Kennedy was a serious event in the history of America and deserves a special mention. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories about his murder so I will not be going into much detail on this one. You can do your own research if you're interested. May his sould RIP.
6. Insider Trading -
Insider Trading is the illegal practice of trading on the stock exchange to one's own advantage through having access to confidential information. Consider a case where the CTO of a company has information about the company's future. He knows that the company is going to go into bankruptcy even though the share price is skyrocketing. He sells all his shares, essentially cashing out his position. In this case he had confidential information that no one (in the public) could possibly have. He maliciously used his position to his own advantage, damaging the public financially. This is the reason why special regulatory bodies like the SEC exist. They make sure such incidents do not happen and maintain the public's trust in the exchanges.
These days insider trading can also be extended to cryptocurrency exchanges. Since these exchanges operate entirely out of the jurisdiction of the regulatory bodies, they are far more likely to engage in these unlawful activities and run away with people's coins. This is why you will find a lot of people telling you not to keep your crypto on third party exchanges.
7. Exit Scam -
If you are a normal law abiding citizen living your life happily and not engaging in 'Under the hood' activities, you might not be familiar with the term exit scam. If you are however interested in dark net markets and how things work underground, it is imperative that you know what an exit scam is.
An exit scam is a confidence trick where an established (usually illegal) business, e.g. a seller of drugs, stops shipping orders while continuing to receive payment for new orders. If the entity had a good reputation, then it can take some time before it is widely recognized that orders are not shipping, and the entity can then make off with the money paid for unshipped orders.
The darknet is full of exit scams. Since the markets (like ebay in regular world, there exist markets like Alphabay, SilkRoad, Evolution, DreamMarketplace etc.) are regularly being taken down by the feds, new links to the markets keep appearing in forums where such discussions are prevalent. One famous example is the Evolution Marketplace exit scam. You can read about it here on wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_(marketplace).
Although these are less likely to happen regularly, when they do, they f^<k a lot of sellers and buyers and run away with their bitcoins/other cryptocurrency stored in their accounts on these marketplaces.
8. Ransomware -
Ransomware is a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid. The hackers generally demand the funds in cryptocurrency as it is almost anonymous and involves no institutions like banks and governments. You can find a lot of videos and articles about the recent WannaCry ransomeware and its derivatives that affected almost the entire world. Although some people choose to format their PCs entirely and not give into the demands of the hackers, organisations like businesses and hospitals are helpless and generally obey the demands within the given time as the information stored on their systems can be worth millions or millions of lives.
There is currently no way to recover from a ransomware once your system is compromised. You better make sure you have a good antivirus software installed or you're going to lose a lot of your favorite pictures.
9. Blackhat hacking -
If you thought Blackhat means a bad hacker and Whitehat means a good hacker then let me save your time and tell you that you are indeed correct. Blackhats are criminals who hack websites for various malicious reasons. They could be hacking ecommerce websites to obtain credit card information stored in their databases (look into Target credit card hack) or they could be hacking (defacing) a rival country's government websites (look into India, Pakistan, Turkey hacks). Whitehat hackers on the other hand are referred to as ethical hackers and help organisations protect their data from Blackhats.
10. Revenge Porn -
Wikipedia states that
"Revenge pornography, or revenge porn (informal), is the sexually explicit portrayal of one or more people that is distributed without their consent via any medium. The sexually explicit images or video may be made by a partner of an intimate relationship with the knowledge and consent of the subject, or it may be made without his or her knowledge. The possession of the material may be used by the perpetrators to blackmail the subjects into performing other sex acts, to coerce them into continuing the relationship, or to punish them for ending the relationship."
Even though it may seem like a relatively immature and insignificant crime, the long term effects it can have on the parties involved are way too disastrous. One of the largest hacks that revealed sexually explicit pictures of famous celebrities was called "The fappening". Once again, you can do your own research about this. I will refrain from going into too much detail but I will tell you that the pictures of celebrities are to this day available on forums like 4chan and torrent sites like ThePirateBay. What effect it had on the celebrities' minds is beyond my comprehension.
All in all just make sure you don't get involved in this crime as this is almost equivalent to murdering someone.
So these were the 10 underground crimes. I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Don't forget to upvote so everyone can know about these. I will be posting a lot more detailed stuff about the underworld, so don't forget to follow me if you're interested in that kind of $h!t.
Peace Out.