How we drove drug dealers out of Runet



    Today I would like to tell you a story about how we determined sites selling drugs on the Internet, about the extent of the problem, about the experience of IT companies interacting with Roskomnadzor, deputies, various chambers, and why there is no more evil for this.

    It all started with an article on Habr last year, in the framework of which we scanned a list of sites prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation, compiled a frequency dictionary on them, tried to figure out what was happening in the subject of Internet regulation. Interactive visualization of the dictionary is now available on our website, screen:



    The results, to some extent, even surprised us. The vast majority of locks had nothing to do with the persecution of the unwanted: drug trafficking, pornography, gambling. Having looked at the zones in which all this stuff is located, the goal was to rid the .ru zone of drug traffickers.



    We finalized the dictionary taking into account specifics: only the necessary topics, plus words, minus words, identified a bunch of additional features, scored them, taught the system to build a graph of connectivity. As a result, we got a tool with a thin thematic classifier, which, starting from the button, deployed a cluster, scanned all existing domains in the .ru zone, calculated all this, built visualization and generated a report. Here's how it looked:




    All this was done at his own expense, without a drop of grant-eating. This time, the results, to put it mildly, impressed us. More than 5000 sites , brazenly, boldly, without fear of anyone, without climbing into any Torahs and darkwebs, were selling drugs directly in the .ru zone (and now they are trading, they are available without any anonymizers and VPNs), examples:




    Having gathered our thoughts, we sketched out the presentations and contacted various representatives of the authorities. We understood that people hardly understand how the Internet works, we chewed up information like children. God, we came up with a marketing strategy for them to extract political dividends under the slogan “we will get rid of drug traffickers”, if only someone would get down to business. They explained that it is possible to stash the zone so that hucksters will not have time to register domains, moreover they did not ask for anything in return, the maximum is mentioning us as a company that can bypass and analyze all registered world domains in a day.

    Politicians took 100-200 pieces of links to the “test”, worked them out on their MVD’s channels, extracted the same political dividends, promised some kind of mythical contracts (just give me some more links), and stupidly merged, forgetting to even mention the company in private meetings. Due to the formal process of blocking by the court’s decision, our bodies are not able to work out more than 100-200 links a month and the material we poured into the politicians was enough for long-term public relations, there was no talk of a real fight.

    Why the hell did you get involved with politicians, you ask? And I will answer. On the fucking goat (sorry) you will not go into any high office. In any case, we did not succeed. Politicians were proxies. True, we tried to change something in this country, held many meetings, spent a huge amount of money and time, in the hope that one of them would catch on and really work out the topic. As a result, I had to temporarily change the country of residence so that those who we still managed to spoil the business did not get choked with kidneys in the entrance.

    Now this project is closed and we no longer plan to launch it on our own initiative. Do not repeat our mistakes. So it goes.

    UPD: in addition to the article, I will partially quote my comment for those who think that we decided to regulate the Internet:
    I only welcome your alternative point of view on the issue of locks. Perhaps you are 100% right and everything needs to be done exactly as you say it, I don’t know. Only these sites right now, in accordance with applicable law are prohibited . If you want to change the situation with locks - change the law, change it with civilized methods. Go to the Public Chamber, take part in the round table, uphold your position, do the most important thing . I went, took part. And I can say that contrary to public opinion, not stupid people are sitting there, and most importantly, they are doing something in any case. Is it bad, good, a completely different question, but they do.

    PS We are not fighters with drugs or anything illegal, we are an IT company that knows how to scribble and scan all existing Internet domains. We conduct research on technologies, markets, brands, develop anti-phishing systems, analyze content. At the same time, yes, we believe that sites selling drugs do not have a place in the public domain. The availability of a tool that allows high-precision detection of drug stores in clearwebs gave us hope that we can not only declare our position, but also propose solutions for this. The article is mostly about how we created this tool, but did not find among the "fighters" who want to use it.

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