The Dark Web is driving a worrying new wave of criminality, security analysts have announced. The coronavirus pandemic has created pandemonium for traditional businesses. But experts have revealed how criminals continue to make money by increasingly turning to a little-known area of the internet.

Edvardas Mikalauskas, Senior Writer and Researcher at CyberNews has revealed how drugs, weapons, and pornography have widely available to almost anyone with internet access. “Alongside the ‘normal’ internet that we use on a daily basis, websites have a huge archive of unindexed material – the Deep Web.” However, a more concealed part of the web exists that Google never touches.

Because of its secrecy and the anonymity it provides, this has been coined the Dark Web and it has become a key place for users to make illegal transactions for drugs, weapons, and pornography.  Worryingly for internet users, stolen identities are also available for purchase on the Dark Web in huge quantities.

“As well as a rise in the purchase of illegal goods, the growth and development of the Dark Web has facilitated a rise in identity theft. In the modern day, identity theft and black-market identity auctions are thriving, and costing people millions of pounds a year. Worryingly, identity theft is on the rise, up to 2,200K, with the Dark Web playing a key role in this statistic.”