The Right to Be Forgotten: Cybercriminal Forum Account Deletion

This report examines how cybercriminal forum account retention and deactivation (rather than full deletion) create long-lived traces that can expose threat actors through reused aliases, linked identifiers, and poor OPSEC; it uses historical arrests (AlphaBay, Silk Road, Anubis) to illustrate how past mistakes persist and highlights that these forum artifacts are valuable intelligence for defenders who want to assess the credibility and capabilities of online threats.