What is Dark Bay?
As the name implies, darkBay a.k.a. dBay can be regarded as the eBay of the darknet. This also becomes clear as soon as you visit the site: dBay is one of the few market sites that basically offer everything. So if you just want to browse for interesting items, this is a perfect site to spend your time on. If the market site is up, you can find the onion link for darkbay to the right of this article.
darkBay Features
What’s pretty unique about darkBay is that it is a wallet-less site, meaning that you do not need to deposit any money. All purchases are directly sent to an escrow account which will release the funds to the seller once the trade has completed.
There are literally hundrends of different categories: From Software, carded items, counterfeits, drugs and chemicals to jewelry and gold as well as guides and tutorials – you can find about anything on dBay.
Even though darkBay is a market site for about anything imaginable there are a few prohibited items, like on most darknet sites. Among them are: Guns and weaponry, explosives or dangerous/radioactive chemicals, any kind of CP, contract murders, human trafficking as well as exotic animals or livestock are banned and may not be traded on the platform. Otherwise, the standard rules apply: No Doxing, FUD, slander or threats of violence may be posted.
Other than that you are free to trade about anything you can imagine. darkBay encourages all buyers to carefully read a vendor’s profile before purchasing any items.
Currently, darkBay supports three currencies: Bitcoin, Litecoin and Monero. As mentioned before, you need no wallet or deposits on this site, all purchases are paid directly into escrow. Fund will be held in escrow for up to 14 days, but vendors with a high reputation can list “Finalize Early” (FE) offers that circumvent the escrow system. Obviously you should trust this vendor before purchasing anything without the security of the escrow system but such vendors have already been verified by the darkBay staff and have completed hundreds of trades without any complaints: To be able to offer FE-Listings
Security Recommendations
Like with all darknet market sites the standard security recommendations apply. First and foremost, stay anonymous. Use the TOR browser only and don’t use the TOR browser for any regular (non-darknet) browsing. Ideally, you have a dedicated system or at least a dedicated VM for all your darknet activities. Keep your darknet PGP keys and other credentials limited to that system only, do not mix it with any activities that would expose your identity.
Treat your dedicated system like a work-system: Only install the software necessary for your operations do not install anything for entertainment or other purposes. Subsequently, resist the urge to browse Twitter, Reddit or any other social media sites while you have downtime. For this always use your regular system.
Never communicate with vendors or buyers outside of darkBay market or you lose the security of the escrow system and dispute policy. Make sure that you encrypt all your communication, no matter how trivial it is. Not only decreases this your overall risk but also helps to establish a habit of it.
For additional system security, we recommend you run a secure operating system like Tails or https://www.whonix.org/ on your dedicated system for darknet activities. We also recommend using a VPN as an additional security measure since TOR will only anonymize your browsing sessions but not other traffic.
Especially when using any public WiFi hotspots you should always use a VPN when accessing the Internet since you don’t know whether the access point is compromised. A VPN ensures that all of your traffic, no matter what application, will always be strongly encrypted when passing the access point, this protecting yourself not only from eavesdropping but also possible identity theft.
darkBay summary
darkBay is a great site if you just want to see what the darknet has to offer. Because of the vast number of different item categories, you might be able to find unusual things here. BUt of course, this is also perfect to acquire products that are not listed on any of the other popular darknet sites. As a general-purpose market, darkBay is unmatched – it is definitely one of the sites you should check out. As always, when visiting any darknet market make sure to only use trusted links, such as the onion link for darkbay on the top right.