Why Your Personal Data Are Floating Around on the Darknet, Which Just Keeps Growing

Bob Erdman, from cybersecurity firm Fortra, said the darknet would stay as long as there is a market for drugs, stolen data, and child sexual abuse images.

An undated image of a researcher at security company DBI searching the darknet at an undisclosed location. DBI

In June 2025, police in Europe shut down a darknet marketplace for drugs called Archetyp Market, which had more than 600,000 users, and the following month the FBI announced that Operation Grayskull had led to the sentencing of 18 offenders to a total of 300 years for offenses relating to child sexual abuse material on the darknet.

The FBI maintains a Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement team, and in May 2025 it announced that 270 people had been arrested globally as part of Operation RapTor and that hundreds of pounds of fentanyl had been seized as part of an operation targeting drug traffickers on darknet websites.