According to an INTERPOL research report in April 2017, an illegal wildlife market has been discovered on the Deep Web. Experts found a good amount of items for sale including ivory poached from elephants, rhino horns and organic tiger products. Actual tiger body parts were also found to be up for sale on the marketplace.
While the Deep Web isn’t all that well known for the selling of illegal wildlife products, it’s a slightly overlooked problem. INTERPOL has designated a task force to combat these criminals and their illegal animal related activities on the Deep Web. The hardest part about all of this is because of how the Deep Web operates so secretly, which makes it increasingly difficult for authorities to manage.
There was some good news that came out of the discovery though: authorities found that the marketplace was operating on a mass scale. Instead, the amount of the illegal wildlife items found was pretty limited. It was very sad to see that the majority of these items were derived from our world’s most endangered animals.
The Vice President for Species Conservation, Philip Muruthi, is very aware of the wildlife related cyber crimes taking place on the Deep Web and has appraised the situation. Authorities have made it a point to collaborate on a huge scale with law enforcement around the world in order to better combat the problem.
They are confident that as long as the population for these endangered animals continues to be unaffected, they are considering their efforts successful. As these cyber criminals continue to find new ways to commit their crimes on the Deep Web, authorities are following suit. Through the use of endless research and the implementing of new technologies, authorities are able to keep the upper hand.
