The dark web is home to almost anything you could think of, but one researcher discovered at least one website designed to carry out assassination orders, and has revealed the disturbing 'kill list' messages attached to each request.
Most people have at least heard of the dark web or are familiar with it in concept, yet only a small fraction of the global population has actually been on it, or is aware of how to gain access.
While it can be used for a number of different things – including the recent option to purchase illegal versions of AI models – its most popular applications appear to involve buying and selling drugs, weapons, and even obtaining highly dangerous material like uranium.
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One use for the dark web that still might surprise you though is how it can be used as a service for hitmen, where people offer anonymous murder requests in exchange for fees that are usually paid in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
Dark web researcher Carl Miller stumbled upon a website offering these very services when alerted by Chris Monteiro, a hacker he was working with who had actually managed to break into the website's back end and view the assassination requests as they were rolling in.
Miller and Monteiro immediately knew that they had discovered something that was equally as fascinating as it was disturbing, and coined this database of messages the 'kill list'.
He has since revealed a number of the messages during a recent TED Talk, and while they often keep it simple with brief descriptions and motivations, that doesn't make them any less frightening.
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"Target is a simple, easy person but high risk putting me in jail," writes one kill request for Amsterdam, with a payment of $1,976 attached, adding that the "target needs to be eliminated asap, therefore a bonus reward of 500 if target is eliminated within the upcoming weekend."
Another request for Paris paid out $1,100 to burn a woman's apartment in the hope that she would be inside when the fire started, and a third in Slovakia offered a far higher payment of $14,661.17 to murder their target "by shooting and running."
Understandably Miller immediately took his discovery to the police, but they declined an investigation, presumably because they didn't quite believe what he had found.
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Instead, he took it upon himself to seek out the targets that people had paid to kill on that very list himself in an attempt to warn them about the dangers that they were facing, and the reaction he was greeted with will definitely leave you stunned.
Many simply hung up or ignored his warnings, whereas others almost reacted with indifference as they weren't surprised someone had paid to have them killed.
Eventually he managed to get the FBI involved, and 32 arrests have been made so far across the world from the disclosure of 175 paid-for kill orders, with the authorities likely to make far more in the future as investigations continue.
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What might leave you shocked, however, is how so many of the people behind the kill orders and their targets are otherwise 'normal' people that you might see in your everyday life or even be friends with.
"What this website seems to do, in the eyes of the orders at least, is to make taking out a hit on someone convenient and clean and safe and easy," Miller explains, "whereas it was once difficult and dangerous and scary."
This allows people that would have otherwise never entertained the possibility of paying for such a horrific act to now do so, and his investigation led the researcher to come to an incredibly alarming conclusion.
"If there's one thing that I've come away from this whole lurid, crazy journey really thinking," Miller illustrates, "[is that] we might all be just a little bit closer to being on a kill list than we might think."