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?

@PurpleDaisy17is correct on the deep web Actually, @Aridane, PurpleDaisy is right and wrong. She's right that the dark web is used legitimately in the ways she described, not the deep web. Most of the internet is the "dark web" - stuff that doesn't show up in search engines, the kinds of things listed in the article you posted. The dark web is not a term for the criminal element of the deep web, it refers to the part of the web that is encrypted and anonymous, and requires the use of a special browser. It is used by criminals but also for legitimate reasons where people need to remain anonymous/untraceable.

If this helps people understand: The normal internet is like sending a letter from Blackpool to London through the post. You write your letter, write the address, and it's sent to London.

On TOR you write a letter from Blackpool, and send it to Manchester, with instructions for them to send it to Liverpool, who have instructions to send it to Essex, who have instructions to send it to somewhere else, on and on until the last stage where it gets sent to London.

With the normal internet it's easy to find who sent the letter as you just look at the return address. With TOR the return address is just the previous node, or "city". Tracing means tracing back every single stage, it's not impossible but it's much harder to do.

This means that criminals use websites like this as the chances of them being found are much lower. The dark web itself is just a tool to keep your internet use private by hiding where it comes from. There are legitimate uses for this - think countries where being a whistle blower would get you killed, or a journalist talking to a source.

It is used for bad, but it wasn't made to be used for bad. There is normal stuff on there and you are not automatically a bad person for using it.

Sorry, no I’m wrong.. I’m getting my webs and my nets mixed up!

My husband and I have been on it - just for curiosity’s sake. Not much to see but then again we were not looking for anything. People sell drugs/guns openly there.

I only recently found out about the 'dark web' too. Terrorists and the like go on there and make plans apparently.

I'm certainly not tempted to look and would hate to have something like that on my computer's history, even by accident (if you can do it by accident).

An arena where you can purchase things, trade and communicate anonymously is obviously going to attract dodgy characters and criminals.

I have a policewoman friend who says that whenever they find out there is a Tor browser on a computer their 'spidey senses' start twitching.

@LittleDidSheKnow It's all made up nonsense terms by media know-nothings.

The Deep Web is generally considered to be "the big hunks of data that have a surface access from the web that search engines can't get into to index", not sure where you're getting your definition from.

Creds: I run systems that hold petabytes of deep web data.

I use the dark web, for privacy and security reasons.

Who are you and what do you do for a living that you need to conduct your activities through a Tor browser? Genuinely curious.

It exists. It’s mainly used by people to sell drugs.
I doubt you can hire a hitman trough the internet but then again, these days you can buy any service online.

Snog, I'm trying! (And love it).

3 episodes from the end of Mr Robot and still thinking WTF?, every week!
Not sure I even have a handle on what genre it is!

This is the maddest thread I’ve come across on MS so many knowledgeable people on the DW .... and in all honesty it’s not a place you should go ,

I had no idea and also had no idea I'm so naive.

not creepy or gooly ghost stories.real life dark shit.real life trafficking.this is where child abusers go.where drugs get sold.where very sordid things happen.
its underground or was invented to be so.and is now where all the dark people go to hang out

friend did part of his thesis on it.all the people saying not sure you can do some of the things people mentioned yes you can.you might have to tumble across.or otherwsie get very deep and dark into it but yes you can find all the things people are shocked/unsure you can do on their.

under cover police have jobs to find things on there so of course it not going to be out i nthe open just because its on the dark web.but you know where to look or go hard enough and there you will find it.

I managed to access a small part of it once but was fairly horrified by what I found and have never been back. I also have to admit that the computer I used suffered a massive and unrepairable virus a few hours later despite being laden with all sorts of firewalls, virus killers etc.

The 'dark web' doesn't really exist, it's just another part of the web. It operated how the web did when it was only geeks and scientists using it, notice boards and such.

Tor is a useful tool if you want to access the web without leaving your fingerprints everywhere and you don't like targeted advertising.

DuckDuckgo is a search engine that works just as well as google but without tracking and collecting your data.

While people might not want to leave traces for nefarious reasons there might also be good reasons eg researching a refuge

The silk road is an interesting thing to study. Yes it was mainly about selling drugs, but you could give product / supplier reviews a bit like ebay so drug related crime went down and the drugs sold tended to be of better quality and no leaving the house to wander around a dodgy are to get them.

Alex Winter has an interesting Ted talk on youtube.

I find it bizarre how people on these threads refer to ‘going to’ the dark web and having a look around, as if it’s a physical place - like that council estate everyone tells you to avoid or risk getting stabbed. I really don’t think it’s as simple as normal web on one side of a postcode, dark web on the other.

Surely the point of it is that anything illegal is well-hidden and cannot be simply stumbled across by a browse around? Some posters make it sound like once you’re in, you’re presented with a ‘Welcome to the Dark Web’ guide that tells you where to click for hitmen, child porn or Class A drugs. Like some nefarious version of those touch screens in a shopping centre that tell you which way to Debenhams.

I first heard of the dark web during cyber security training in a law firm! I was fascinated. I would never access it and certainly wouldn't want it in my browsing history. There are other alternative webs too. I imagine government security monitors all webs.

I know it exists and I know it's what peadophiles use to access images. That in itself is enough to stay well clear.

There's a Netflix documentary series called Dark Net which is pretty interesting albeit a bit cheesy in some parts. Worth a watch if you want some creepy/disturbing real life stories about the dark web.

It's really just another way of surfing the web but without being traced

Personally I wouldn't rely on that . There are ways of de-anonymising traffic if you have enough. And GCHQ and the NSA have it all to start with.