The first major online black market where people could anonymously buy everything from drugs to guns was shut down and its creator was arrested by the FBI in 2013, but that hasn't slowed an explosion in similar sites.
At its peak in early 2013, The Silk Road marketplace saw around $300,000 a day in transactions on its site, with users paying for products with the untraceable digital currency Bitcoin.
And since both sellers and users connected to the "dark web" through special tools such as the secure Tor web browser to stay anonymous, the most popular products were usually of the illegal variety.
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While the operator of the Silk Road was eventually tracked down by the FBI, his exposure has only led to copycats who are happy to provide a similar service to thousands of buyers on the dark web.
Online black markets don't exist on the normal internet that most people think of.
They exist on the "dark web" that can only be accessed using special tools like Tor, a free web browser originally developed in the 1990s by the US Navy to protect military intelligence online.
Besides its military uses, Tor has become a favorite among hackers, activists, journalists, and others who want to shield their online identity.
It's also been a go-to for criminals, accelerated by the popularity of The Silk Road, an underground marketplace started in 2011.
The Silk Road was shut down in 2013, but Silk Road 2.0, and 3.0 popped up again rapidly. Then other marketplaces came on the scene, like AlphaBay.
"To this day, more than half of anonymous marketplaces implement websites that are directly derived from the template that Silk Road used,” Kyle Soska, a Carnegie Mellon University researcher, <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/10/02/buying-drugs-online-remains-easy-2-years-after-fbi-killed-silk-road" target="_new">told</a> US News and World Report.
To access AlphaBay, users type in a special Tor-only address. The marketplace started in Dec. 2014 and has grown to become <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/10/02/buying-drugs-online-remains-easy-2-years-after-fbi-killed-silk-road" target="_new">the market leader.</a>
Signing up for the site takes only seconds. After logging in, this is the home screen to welcome new users.
The site is organized by categories just like any other e-commerce site. Except you won't find categories or listings for "Drugs," "Weapons" or "Porn" on eBay or Amazon.
The hottest item on the site is definitely drugs, with more than 36,000 listings for marijuana, cocaine, MDMA, and everything in between.
But there are people selling watches, which may or may not be stolen or counterfeit.
There are guns that can't be traced.
This guide which claims to teach how to make C4 explosives costs less than $1.
And there are even stolen credit card numbers, which criminals can purchase for less than 10 bucks.
This one has apparently sold more than 3,600 credit cards since June, all with plenty of positive feedback from buyers.
Yes, that's right. Feedback. Just like on eBay, satisfied customers leave glowing reviews after they receive their merchandise.
Positive feedback works into a seller's "trust level" on AlphaBay, an important metric users can gauge of whether they'll get scammed.
Though AlphaBay is the biggest, it's not the only market. Users can use the 'Darknet version of Google,' called Grams, to search others.
Here's what you find if you search for "cannabis."
Which, according to the site, is the most popular search term.
So can marketplaces on the dark web be stopped? As evidenced by the takedown of The Silk Road, they sure can.
But with millions of dollars up for grabs and <a href="http://www.gwern.net/Black-market%20survival">hundreds of other</a> marketplaces popping up in its place, it seems that cybercriminals have the upper hand.
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