Anonymity is one of the most prized assets on the "dark web"
Tor basics
Tor (The Onion Router) is a part of the internet hidden to normal browser software, but accessible via a specially modified version of Firefox.
It was invented by the US Naval Research Laboratory to help people use the net without being traced and aids anonymity in two ways.
Firstly, it can be used to browse the world wide web anonymously. It does this by randomly bouncing the data packets involved through hard-to-follow routes across computer networks using internet bandwidth donated by volunteers.
Secondly, there are hidden sites on Tor that use the .onion domain suffix rather than .com, .org or one of the standard address endings.
These are effectively websites but, as they sit on Tor, have typically been hard to find unless you have been given the relevant address since they are not indexed by normal search engines such as Google or Bing.
Although many media reports about Tor have focused on how it is used to spread pornography and images of child abuse, it is also used for many legitimate means.
Journalists and whistle-blowers use it to communicate with each other, with the New Yorker magazine's Strongbox being one example of a "dead drop" service based on the technology.
Tor has been funded by, among others, the Electronic Frontier Foundation digital rights group, Google, Human Rights Watch and the US National Science Foundation.
Silk Road, the infamous online marketplace for drugs and other illegal goods, was closed down by the FBI earlier this month. Since then its alleged founder, Ross Ulbricht - who denies being the site's operator known as Dread Pirate Roberts - has been taken into custody, and police forces around the world have been making arrests.
It is a blow to the sale and distribution of harmful substances, including cocaine and heroin, as well as disrupting other criminal activities arranged online, such as the sale of weapons and hitmen for hire.
But for how long will society have been made safer?
Does it mean the end for illegal marketplaces hidden in the so-called "deep web", which depend on the anonymity provided by the Tor network and the Bitcoin digital currency to attract buyers and sellers?
Or is it little more than a minor inconvenience?
One man with first-hand experience of FBI takedowns is Emmanuel Gadaix.
He was one of the directors of Megaupload, the popular file-sharing website founded by Kim Dotcom that was closed down by the US Department of Justice in January 2012.
"This changes nothing in the same way that the closure of Megaupload changed nothing," he says.
"All that happens if you bust him [Dread Pirate Roberts] is that two new people come along.
"The closure of Silk Road is no more the end of online narcotics sales as the arrest of Al Capone was the end of organised crime."
Another man with similar experience is a twenty-something expat Irishman who calls himself H2.0.
He is the ex-spokesman for a deep web drugs marketplace called Atlantis, which was closed down by its operators shortly before the Silk Road takedown for "security reasons".
Criminals may be more than willing to prey on others, but when it comes to their own dealings they want to feel safe, and H2.0 says Silk Road had managed to build a strong brand in the underworld.
"It was a pillar of trust in an otherwise Wild West of dodgy scamsites," he says.
But he is sure an alternative to Silk Road will emerge.
"We could be in for a period of sites popping up for a few months and closing [just] as fast. Silk Road will be replaced fast but the trust will take longer."
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24526677]
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