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The feds want Reddit to rat on its dark web forum members

The feds want Reddit to rat on its dark web forum members

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The site has been subpoenaed for information on five users

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We may not have heard the last of the massive Evolution drug market. The dark web marketplace abruptly disappeared — along with users' bitcoin — earlier this month, but there are new indications that law enforcement is looking into what happened. Wired reports that the Baltimore Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement has subpoenaed Reddit for information on five users of Reddit's r/darknetmarkets, all of whom discussed the fall of Evolution.

The subpoena, according to Wired, requests potentially identifying information, such as the IP addresses of the users. (It also, apparently, asks for financial information — something far from necessary to create an account and post on Reddit.) Four of the users claimed to have varying amounts of information on Evolution, while the fifth was a security researcher named Gwern Branwen, who speculates he received a subpoena when another user promised to send him delicate information on Evolution administrators, which he claims never to have received. Branwen revealed the subpoenas to Wired and subsequently wrote about them in a Reddit post.

It wouldn't be a surprise if law enforcement were interested in Evolution. The site — which sold weapons and credit card information, as well as drugs — was a massive hub, which, before its collapse, rivaled even the better-known Silk Road 2.0.