One would assume that the users of deep web-related subreddits would take just as many precautions to protect their privacy when using Reddit as they do when on the deep web. Just because you don't actually conduct illegal activity via Reddit doesn't mean that it's impossible for someone to connect the dots to your deep web forum account(s) with enough effort.
If people turned out to truly be that foolish then I will have little, if any, sympathy for them.
One would be quite foolish to assume strong OpSec from drug seekers and their enablers. We've seen case after case resulting from these busts with absolutely trivial investigations necessary to locate the defendants.
Not a /r/DarkNetMarket customer, but I read it to keep the pulse on that section of the Bitcoin economy. You're very right. Every few months someone posts a "tails is overkill, here's my (misconfigured insecure) mobile TOR setup that is just as good". I'd wager many darknetmarkets customers aren't keeping tor properly up to date either.
Right, you are certainly correct about security, I personally pay it pretty loose. As a consumer, I assume that it is possible (and even probable) i am being monitored at some points. However, the people who have the level of technology to do the monitoring are probably not the people who make arrests for $30 of narcotics.
I'm not 100% on this but I thought that because Reddit isn't hosted on the 'deep web' (ie no .onion address) you lose a layer of protection visiting it even over Tor, compared to sites that are hosted on Tor. It's still safer, but it's not the same, right?
Anyway, it's inevitable that some people are better at anonymising themselves than others, so even if they all try to do so, there's going to be at least some users who do it badly and wind up being arrested.
It's also inevitable that 100% of people who are confident enough to buy drugs online think that they have done everything correctly.
Tor still masks your IP, and as long as you make sure you take proper steps to disable Javascript, use HTTPS, avoid mentioning anything that could allow someone to easily pick you out among a group of people, etc., you can still manage to maintain a certain level of anonymity. Riskier, sure, but certainly not outside the realm of possibility.
At least as far as I understand it. I admittedly don't have as much experience with Tor as I'd like, so I'd be happy to be told that I'm wrong.
If people turned out to truly be that foolish then I will have little, if any, sympathy for them.