The dark web

[Humpfour]

I'm 39 years old and today have just learnt from DBIL that there's such a thing as the 'Dark web'

I feel as though I've been living under a rock! Has anyone ever been on there before? Can you really hire a hitman and things or is DBIL exaggerating?

It claims to be about freedom and privacy, avoidance of censorship and surveillance

It was and still is. It is used by people who live in places where they don't have freedom of speech or where internet access is monitored. Unfortunately it is also used by many more people for criminal reasons.

Humpfour it’s more about arranging very nasty stuff, actual international crime networks who kill people, from drug dealers to ISis - not slightly scary tingle back of the neck feeling. I wouldn’t go there.
I think lots of people try it out of curiosity.
And it’s probably also full of liars pretending to be criminals

The Deep Web is not illegal - or certainly not in places without government censorship. It is not just for dodgy stuff. Plenty of journalists use it to communicate with people like whistleblowers. Criminals use the internet, so of course they use the ‘deep web’, basically just the name for sites that are not indexed by search engines’, to sell their wares as its harder to track. The world is sinister, the internet is just another vehicle sinister people use.

There are legitimate reasons for using TOR, though I think most people use a VPN instead these days.

TOR is just an internet browser that bounces around your traffic between lots and lots of servers so that it's really hard to trace where it originally came from. This allows people doing dodgy things to hide more easily. It can be used to access normal websites while hiding your origins. This is sometimes used for privacy or security reasons.

A VPN does a similar thing and is often easier to use/doesn't slow down your internet connection as much. It used to be common to hear of people using TOR for normal browsing but it's not done much these days.

@jesuschristsuperphwooar calm the hysterics. You've got no idea what you are talking about. TOR has legitimate uses and just using it in no way can cause a child to be abused.

seriously? when I assume you know what it's about? Your 'curiosity' has contributed to a child being horrifically abused - for anyone to even think about searching this is beyond me and vile

Can you explain this comment, jesuschrist? It makes no sense.

Using a Tor browser does not contribute to children being abused any more than using Google contributes to anyone who happens to have a website that can be accessed by it.

Thanks @aLilNonnyMouse. It was a good few years and I think a few people were doing the same then in a bid to find a less intrusive browser.

It was and still is

Yes, indeed. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise, just giving them a description they would use themselves.
I have no problem with Tor whatsoever.

@Topazance I downloaded an onion browser and I was able to access it via that. Be very careful if you do go on it. It’s tricky to navigate and you’ll probably end up seeing things you wish you hadn’t

The Deep Web is not illegal

It's not the 'deep web' it's the 'dark web' - notorious place for rapists, paedophiles and the dregs of society to co-exist.

I so wish people would educate themselves before sprouting utter crap.

When I think of people using the dark web I always imagine people in dark rooms with massive old desk top PCs looking very suspect.

@jesuschristsuperphwooar how dare you insinuate I’m contributing to child abuse? I was young and silly and wanted to see what it was about. I didn’t go on it to look at children being abused so cool it with the hysterics. There’s plenty of things on there besides the weird stuff. I even found some lovely poetry on there if you must know

@Ebonyandivory2 so if you got on it would you need to know a web address to see anything bad? There’s not like a yahoo home page full of horrible stuff is there? I’m just struggling to picture anything other than the normal web where we just google and go really.

The deep web is accessed by Tor, the ‘dark web’ is just the name for criminal activity on it. I am not sure why you seem so angry but trust me I am not the one that is confused.

Sorry my comment was for @jesuschristsuperphwooar

jesuschrist you are the one spouting utter crap.

Using onion routing does not contribute to the nefariousness you were describing unless you access those particular sites and, presumably, pay for things.

SeditionSue Mon 09-Dec-19 23:38:00
jesuschristsuperphwooar
Knee jerk much!?
Give over.

Seriously? I'd take my knees jerking every day rather than reasoning with some low life on the dark web? are you for real? Here - let me introduce to people who arwww.facebook.com/pg/guardiansofthenorth/posts/e trying to protect our children

Knee jerk where frickin paedophiles are grooming our kids? Would love an explanation for that

@Tiredandgrumpytonight no you don't just log on and see pages full of horrible stuff. Everything has to be accessed via a URL just like the normal internet, except there is no google. If you don't know the address then you can't find it.

There is the hidden wiki which is an index of sites, but most are fake. Any serious criminal gangs wouldn't link their site directly to every curious passerby.

Most of the criminal activities are invite only and quite hard to just "stumble" on. Exceptions tend to be the sites selling drugs since they want to advertise as much as possible.

Not only is it 'not that bad', it has some very positive aspects. Want to stop the likes of Facebook, Google and the tories spying on you and selling your personal data? Use Tor. I expect there will now be a lot of ullulating bucketheads insisting that 'if you're not doing anything wrong, it doesn't matter if the government or large corporations are watching you' - given that everyone who isn't completely stupid now knows that people's personal data has been used for things like voter manipulation, it's now more important than ever to have access to encrypted communications. And, ooh, wow, isn't it a coincidence that there's been bout after bout of scaremongering about it being all sex traffickers and reeeeeeaaaaaalllllly Evil Porn on there?

@Tiredandgrumpytonight you would need to know the address for things mostly. There are directories for certain sites but it is not searchable the way google is. You can also access normal sites. At the end of the day, Tor is just a browser.

@Tiredandgrumpytonight it’s hard to explain but for the most part you would need to know where to look if you want to see something sinister. When I first went on it there was Just a random list of sites on the screen so as a novice the only choice I had was to click on a random link and pray I didn’t come across anything horrifying. And I didn’t for the most part except for one clip from what appeared to be some kind of snuff film but I don’t know if it was real. I left immediately after that as I was freaked out

'ullulating bucketheads', I'm dying

@PurpleDaisy17is correct on the deep web

Wikipedia article

Deep web
Language
Watch
Edit
This article is about the part of the World Wide Web not indexed by traditional search engines. For other uses, see Deep web (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Dark web.
The deep web,[1] invisible web,[2] or hidden web[3] are parts of the World Wide Web whose contents are not indexed by standard web search-engines. The opposite term to the deep web is the "surface web", which is accessible to anyone/everyone using the Internet.[4] Computer-scientist Michael K. Bergman is credited with coining the term deep web in 2001 as a search-indexing term.[5]

The content of the deep web is hidden behind HTTP forms[6][7] and includes many very common uses such as web mail, online banking, private or otherwise restricted access social-media pages and profiles, some web forums that require registration for viewing content, and services that users must pay for, and which are protected by paywalls, such as video on demand and some online magazines and newspapers.

The content of the deep web can be located and accessed by a direct URL or IP address, but may require a password or other security access to get past public-website pages.

Contents
Terminology Edit

The first conflation of the terms "deep web" with "dark web" came about in 2009 when deep web search terminology was discussed together with illegal activities taking place on the Freenet and darknet.[8]

Since then, after their use in the media's reporting on the Silk Road, many[9][10] people and media outlets have taken to using 'deep web' synonymously with the dark web or darknet, a comparison some reject as inaccurate[11] and consequently has become an ongoing source of confusion.[12] Wired reporters Kim Zetter[13] and Andy Greenberg[14] recommend the terms be used in distinct fashions. While the deep web is a reference to any site that cannot be accessed through a traditional search engine, the dark web is a portion of the deep web that has been intentionally hidden and is inaccessible through standard browsers and methods.[15][16][17][18][19]