I see all these posts saying that because Agora and Evolution are both still running they must be honey pots and that you shouldn't use them.
First, let's get out of the way that that's really just an assumption. There is no reason to suggest that this must be the case. If a site like Evo or Agora are run by different people from Silkroad. They have different code. Their admins fallow different OPSEC (hopefully they don't have their heads up their ass on this one) then when one site is taken down the other will survive parallel as it takes a whole different route to compromise it and shut it down.
Now that we have cleared that up. If it's a honey pot LE is powerless against me and I'm still going to use the site. Let's analyze for a second what LE could do if they seized full control of a darknet market.
If it is a honey pot they can make an image of the servers. They can read all information going in and out of the site. All communication between users and vendors. They can see what Bitcoin where deposited to this site and of course trace their origin via the blockchain. They can take all profit and deposits made to the site and keep it to themselves. They can manipulate data on the site. Charge reviews, change public PGP keys listed on users/vendor profiles. They could also plant malicious code on the server.
LE CANNOT identify the IP address of users due to the TOR network. I trust TOR to not be broken. I acknowledge that there are theoretical attacks all users should be aware of (I recommend you look up the NSA's leaked PowerPoint on TOR). As such I connect to TOR only over a double VPN for added security.
Now. When I send all sensitive information to vendors using PGP in the event of a honey pot LE can't discover who I am as all they get is encrypted text. Any sensitive info a vendor may want to send to me they can encrypt to me with PGP (I suggest you use higher end 4096 bit PGP keys, you should never use a key below 2048 bit). Sure maybe some basic unencrypted text is sent to vendors. So what. I'm still pseudonymous.
I have my vendors PGP keys saved on my computer so I know even if they did change the PGP key listed it wouldn't effect me. As for new vendors pretty much all vendors selling physical goods are on more than one market place so it allows for greater authentication that it's their PGP. Even if by chance they started replacing PGP left and right on all markets the vendors would notice and so would the users when we don't get out drugs.
All Bitcoin I send to a market place is tumbled multiple times though various means. You can use altcoin exchanges in conjunction with CoinJoin to tumble cheaply to add extra security encase on of the tumblers used as a honey pot (it's also useful transferring between altcoin exchanges using an alt, not just because it ensures you don't transfer out same Bitcoin but it makes it far quicker to transfer LTC a few times and trade for BTC for deposit than BTC>BTC>BTC). So even if it is a honey pot LE doesn't know where my Bitcoin came from.
Now they could seize funds. We would start to notice this quick. Regardless I am now going to start learning multisig on Evo to solve this.
So? What are we left with? The ability for LE to run a drug empire and profit? Those sneaky bastards. Next thing you know they'll be funding the Contras.
Sorry if there are typos, I got to leave can't reread this post now, will edit faults later.
Is this the new "I'm behind 7 proxies"?