Darknet Market Glossary

Quick answer: why a glossary?

Darknet market research uses terms from cryptography, economics, law, and public health. This glossary defines the vocabulary used across the guide so that claims can be compared precisely.

Darknet market

A marketplace hosted on a darknet network, usually Tor, that facilitates transactions that are illegal or heavily regulated in many jurisdictions.

Onion service

A service reachable through Tor using a .onion address rather than public DNS.

Vendor

An account that advertises goods or services on a market.

Listing

A market entry describing a product, price, and vendor.

Escrow

A trust mechanism intended to hold value until a transaction is completed.

Feedback

Ratings or comments intended to signal vendor reliability.

Dispute

A process for resolving disagreements, often controlled by the operator.

Exit scam

A platform or vendor disappearance that appropriates funds or goods.

Phishing

A lookalike page or message designed to steal credentials or payments.

Mirror

An alternate address serving the same or similar content.

Canonical link

The address a service publishes as its main location.

Takedown

An enforcement action that closes or seizes a platform.

Seizure

The legal taking of infrastructure, funds, or evidence by authorities.

Dark figure

Activity that is never observed and therefore missing from statistics.

Sampling bias

Error caused by observing a non-representative subset of a population.

Deduplication

Removing duplicate records for the same service or address.

Provenance

The record of where data came from and how it was obtained.

Triangulation

Using multiple independent sources to support a conclusion.

OSINT

Open-source intelligence: collection and analysis of publicly available information.

Harm reduction

Policies or practices intended to reduce harms without necessarily eliminating the underlying activity.

Pseudonymity

Use of a persistent identity that is not necessarily linked to a legal name.

Metadata

Information about communication, such as timing, frequency, or size, rather than its content.

Deanonymisation

The process of linking a pseudonymous or anonymous activity to a person or device.

Threat model

A description of the adversaries, risks, and protections relevant to a project.

Data minimisation

Collecting only the data necessary for a stated purpose.

Ethics review

Institutional assessment of the risks and safeguards of a research project.

Reproducibility

The ability of another researcher to repeat or evaluate a method.

Displacement

The movement of activity from one platform or channel to another after disruption.

Return to the darknet market FAQ or the research overview.

Last updated: October 2026. Site map.