More than seven years ago, Australian writer Eileen Ormsby ventured into the darkest corners of the internet—and paid a personal price for telling the story.

Beneath the surface of the everyday internet lies a parallel world that both fascinates and horrifies: a hidden network where drugs are traded, stolen identities exchanged, and violence is sometimes treated as a commodity. This shadowy realm—known as the dark web—is the subject of The Darkest Web, a book by Australian author and journalist Eileen Ormsby.

Ormsby is no stranger to this underground. Her first book, Silk Road, examined the infamous dark web marketplace that revolutionised online drug sales before its founder was arrested in 2013 and later sentenced to life in prison. With The Darkest Web, Ormsby broadens her focus, exploring not just illicit commerce but the darker motivations and moral failures that thrive in anonymity.

What gives the book its momentum is Ormsby’s careful structure. Divided into three escalating sections—Dark, Darker, and Darkest—the narrative leads readers deeper into increasingly disturbing territory.

The opening section, Dark, revisits the online marketplaces that emerged after Silk Road’s collapse. While Silk Road had been guided by a libertarian ideal—allowing adults to choose what they consumed as long as no one else was harmed—its successors were less principled. Many willingly sold stolen identities, weapons, and hacking tools, driven purely by profit.

Darker centres on one of the book’s most unsettling stories: a man determined to have his wife killed who stumbles upon a supposed hitman-for-hire website. Unbeknown to him, the site is a scam—yet his intent is real. The case ultimately ends in tragedy when, after months of failed attempts to hire a killer, he murders his wife himself and stages the death as a suicide.

The final section, Darkest, confronts the most disturbing aspect of the dark web: communities dedicated to child sexual exploitation material. Ormsby approaches this subject with restraint, clarity, and respect, avoiding sensationalism while underscoring the immense harm involved.

The book also carries a personal toll. Ormsby herself received threats of violence after exposing dark web scams on her blog, All Things Vice. At one point, she was inundated with threatening emails from criminals whose profits she had endangered.

So what draws someone into such a world? Ormsby traces her path back to disillusionment. While working as a lawyer in London during the global financial crisis, she became interested in Bitcoin—then a radical idea designed to operate outside traditional banking systems. Cryptocurrencies, she explains, made dark web marketplaces viable by enabling anonymous transactions between strangers.

That anonymity, however, cuts both ways.

When Ormsby attempted to warn authorities about individuals paying large sums to have people killed through scam sites, she encountered indifference. Law enforcement agencies often dismissed the platforms as fraudulent and therefore harmless. “It was a bit of both,” she says—underestimating both the seriousness of the intent and the difficulty of policing crimes that exist largely online.

Yet The Darkest Web is not entirely bleak. Ormsby notes that international cooperation against child exploitation has been far more effective than efforts to dismantle drug markets. Global taskforces share intelligence, collaborate closely, and continue to improve their ability to identify offenders and rescue victims.

And amid the darkness, she has found unexpected pockets of light. Some dark web communities exist simply to exchange information, discuss markets, or explore psychedelic research. One such group, she jokes, feels like “a little slice of sunshine and rainbows on the dark web.”

Ultimately, The Darkest Web is not just a study of online crime—it is a meditation on anonymity, morality, and human intent. The technology itself is neutral. What matters, Ormsby shows, is what people choose to do when they believe no one is watching.