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Why do people use anonymity-granting technologies when surfing the Internet? Anecdotal evidence suggests that people often resort to using online anonymity services, like the Tor network, because they are concerned about the possibility of their government infringing their civil and political rights, especially in highly repressive regimes. This claim has yet to be subject to rigorous cross-national, over time testing. In this article, econometric analysis of newly compiled data on Tor network usage from 2011 to 2013 shows that the relationship between political repression and the use of the Tor network is U-shaped. Political repression drives usage of Tor the most in both highly repressive and highly liberal contexts. The shape of this relationship plausibly emerges as a function of people's opportunity to use Tor and their need to use anonymity-granting technologies to express their basic political rights in highly repressive regimes.

Do heightened privacy perceptions, censorship concerns and exposure to online crime affect people’s level of opposition to dual-use technologies such as the Dark Web? If they do, then how much do these factors actually drive baseline levels of opposition to the Dark Web? Do privacy and censorship concerns get amplified in regimes with significant Internet restrictions? Does Internet freedom itself affect people’s baseline levels of opposition to Tor and other Dark Web technologies? Using new survey data on 17,121 Internet users in 17 different countries, a series of mixed-effect order logit regressions reveal that privacy and censorship concerns are both significant predictors of less opposition to the Dark Web. Past exposure to online crime, in contrast, significantly increases opposition to the Dark Web. Interestingly, restrictions on Internet freedom do not amplify privacy and censorship concerns, but Internet freedom itself is related to baseline levels of opposition to the Dark Web forming an inverted-U-shaped pattern.

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Market concentration affects each component of the cybersecurity risk equation (i.e. threat, vulnerability and impact). As the Internet ecosystem becomes more concentrated across a number of vectors from users and incoming links to economic market share, the locus of cyber risk moves towards these major hubs and the volume of systemic cyber risk increases. Mitigating cyber risk requires better measurement, diversity of systems, software and firms, attention to market concentration in cyber insurance pricing, and the deliberate choice to avoid ubiquitous interconnection in critical systems.

Darknet drug market participants must complete a distinct cybercrime script if they are to successfully procure illicit substances online. This paper details the four generic stages (i.e. Informational Accumulation; Account Formation; Market Exchange; Delivery/Receipt) of a novel cybercrime script for Darknet drug markets. It also presents vignette examples of known law enforcement interventions that have effectively targeted each stage of the script to reduce usage of these marketplaces. While law enforcement interventions to close specific Darknet markets tend to have only short-lived effects on levels of illicit activity, the lens of the cryptomarket crime script highlights numerous additional steps beyond closure that law enforcement can effectively undertake to reduce use of these platforms.

The Tor anonymity network allows users to protect their privacy and circumvent censorship restrictions but also shields those distributing child abuse content, selling or buying illicit drugs, or sharing malware online. Using data collected from Tor entry nodes, we provide an estimation of the proportion of Tor network users that likely employ the network in putatively good or bad ways. Overall, on an average country/day, ∼6.7% of Tor network users connect to Onion/Hidden Services that are disproportionately used for illicit purposes. We also show that the likely balance of beneficial and malicious use of Tor is unevenly spread globally and systematically varies based upon a country’s political conditions. In particular, using Freedom House’s coding and terminological classifications, the proportion of often illicit Onion/Hidden Services use is more prevalent (∼7.8%) in “free” countries than in either “partially free” (∼6.7%) or “not free” regimes (∼4.8%).

De-listing, de-platforming, and account bans are just some of the increasingly common steps taken by major Internet companies to moderate their online content environments. Yet these steps are not without their unintended effects. This paper proposes a surface-to-Dark Web content cycle. In this process, malicious content is initially posted on the surface Web. It is then moderated by platforms. Moderated content does not necessarily disappear when major Internet platforms crackdown, but simply shifts to the Dark Web. From the Dark Web, malicious informational content can then percolate back to the surface Web through a series of three pathways. The implication of this cycle is that managing the online information environment requires careful attention to the whole system, not just content hosted on surface Web platforms per se. Both government and private sector actors can more effectively manage the surface-to-Dark Web content cycle through a series of discrete practices and policies implemented at each stage of the wider process.