It’s where scammers and bad actors buy and sell leaked confidential information, like credit card information, email addresses, and in some cases, home addresses, too. Perhaps you’ve heard the infamous stories about Silk Road, the online marketplace used to sell illegal drugs with bitcoin behind the veil of the Tor browser. Launched in 2011, it is known to be one of the first online platforms of the dark web. After all, it’s much less popular, can’t be used to access normal websites, and isn’t as easy to use, among other disadvantages. Both rely on a peer-to-peer routing structure combined with layered encryption to make browsing private and anonymous.
Purchasing guns on the black market is an obvious illegal act, but if you are on a forum that includes threats or violence, legality is not so clear. You may not know that you’re engaging in illegal conduct until you’re flagged by the FBI. In 2001, they estimated the deep web to be around 400 to 550 times as big darknet market as the surface web which contains 4.5 billion sites. The deep web is the 99% of the internet that you can’t search on a search engine. There are legitimate areas of the deep web, including mainstream sites like Netflix. That’s because websites are personalized to users’ preferences and aren’t always indexed.
Fake versions of the Tor browser have been created to either breach users before they even access the dark web or monitor the behavior of a user while on the dark web. They are simply domain names used by sites on the Dark Web. Some legal organizations have .onion versions of official websites, including Facebook and ExpressVPN. It is the content or services offered by some websites with the .onion domain that makes them illegal. While the intent of masking data origin is similar, Tor makes use of a decentralized network of user-operated nodes.
Drugs Black Market
This is where people can no longer see, is data that is stored on the internet. For most of us, the internet begins and ends with websites we can find on Google. Sure, we understand that there are websites that are hard to find because they’re unlisted. But we imagine these sites mostly to be blogs and business websites that are too small or undeveloped to see the light of search engines. But there’s a whole other world of websites that you can’t find through Google.
In an attempt to stop the criminal organizations operating on the dark web, authorities are setting up fake websites to track possible criminal activity. By doing this, they get access to whoever is visiting the bitcoin dark web sites — and this includes you if you accidentally end up there. In some parts of the world, simply using a browser like Tor can get you flagged by these agencies, even if you don’t partake in illegal activity.
Legit Darknet Markets
As such, the dark web has attracted many parties who would otherwise be endangered by revealing their identities online. Abuse and persecution victims, whistleblowers, and political dissidents have been frequent users of these hidden sites. But of course, these benefits can be easily extended to those that want to act outside of the constraints of laws in other explicitly illegal ways. Think of Tor as a web browser like Google Chrome or Firefox.
More out-of-reach commodities such as a French passport can cost up to $4,000. Ross Ulbricht received two sentences of life in prison, along with three other convictions. The U.S. government seized over $1 billion worth of bitcoin throughout the entire takedown operation and the decade following it. Most notably fake passports, stolen driver’s licenses and IDs, bank drafts and more. While no one can pinpoint the origins of the Dark Web, it’s now referenced in mainstream conversations about technology and digital security as the seedy source of many security issues.
What is the Tor Browser?
Now, I’d like to recommend NordVPN, which offers strong security features like 256-bit encryption, and they also have an easy-to-use app. Accessing content on the dark web is completely safe and secure, just like when you use a standard web browser. Remember to always stay safe when browsing the dark web and never click on any links that look suspicious. Aranza Trevino is an SEO Content Specialist at Keeper Security.
- Keeper is the first and only password management application to be preloaded with mobile operators and device manufacturers including, AT&T, Orange, America Movil and HTC.
- Just like they’re used on legitimate sites, paywalls are also used to prevent access to deep and dark web content without a paid subscription.
- All of the VPNs in this list offer apps for iOS and Android, plus they use industry-leading security features to provide you with the highest level of privacy while you browse.
- Onion URLs generally contain a string of seemingly random letters and numbers.
Configuring Freenet is simple — you just download and install. It runs automatically in your web browser when you open it, so I recommend using a different browser than you normally do to ensure privacy. You don’t need a server to upload content to Freenet, and as long as your content is popular, it will remain.
Illegal cyber activity cannot necessarily be stumbled upon easily but tends to be much more extreme and threatening if you do seek it out. Before we unpack the dark web’s threats, let’s explore how and why users access these sites. The dark web refers to sites that are not indexed and only accessible via specialized web browsers. Significantly smaller than the tiny surface web, the dark web is considered a part of the deep web.
.Onion Dark Web
Regularly changing your passwords even in the absence of a threat can also make your account information less useful. A password manager can help you create and store strong passwords, and may even perform regular security checkups for you. These are two examples of legitimate organizations that have sites on the dark web.
