When discussing the “dark web,” the common perception is :a group of young cyber criminals who operate in secrecy, engaging in the buying and selling of prohibited drugs, weapons, or even worse items in the sordid underground black market. These places are seen as a “sinful paradise” filled with all manner of illicit goods for criminals. In reality, this view is not entirely a baseless speculation; it has a certain degree of validity. Given the accessibility and anonymity features of the open web, the dark web does indeed exert a significant allure for certain types of websites.
However, it must be said that this is a view that generalizes from a single aspect, which has also given us a negative impression of the dark web. In fact, the dark web is built on the foundation of “freedom of speech,” rather than relying on the “mail order” model that lacks effective communication. Moreover, it also provides a way for people who are trying to evade their country’s restrictive internet regulations or who urgently need to protect their privacy for political reasons.
Next, we will delve into what the “dark web” really is, who is using it, and the practicality of its use, among other issues that have been troubling us.
The origin of the dark web
The dark web operates on the principle of “onion routing,” which reroutes a user’s internet activity through multiple different dispersed IP addresses to conceal the original source of the traffic, thereby achieving anonymity on the network. An unexpected reality is that this concept was initially proposed by the U.S. Navy as a means to protect U.S. intelligence online.
Two mathematicians at the Naval Research Laboratory, after their research, ultimately released the “Onion Routing” project in 1997 — now better known as Tor. They then deployed the project into the public domain for anyone to use, with the rationale that the more users it has, the more difficult it would be to discern the real traffic of the U.S. government within it. Today, Tor has become a key part of the dark web, which we will discuss in detail in the following text.
Since then, the dark web has attracted an increasing amount of criminal activity, as well as activists or journalists who need to be wary of surveillance, and users who are restricted in their internet usage.
The difference between dark web and deep web
Before delving deeper into the dark web, it’s more important to distinguish between the dark web and the deep web. Although some people mistakenly conflate the two, they are not the same. To differentiate them, one must first understand the first “layer” of the internet—the surface web. This is the area that can be found (“indexed”) by any search engine—such as the website of a technology publishing house. This is also referred to as the “clearnet” by dark web users, indicating that this part of the internet is unencrypted.
On the other hand, the “deep web” consists of any pages on the internet that cannot be searched for via search engines. For instance, information that must be searched within a website rather than through a search engine. Websites that contain vast amounts of database information or records are good examples of the deep web. Additionally, internal workplace networks or information on online banking sites also belong to the deep web.
Thus, the “deep web” is merely information submerged beneath the surface web, rather than the breeding ground for criminal activities that some people confuse it to be. Now, let’s explore the “dark web,” which is a part of the deep web, describing parts of the network that are inaccessible to ordinary search engines because their creators wish to keep them hidden. Therefore, you cannot access the dark web through regular browsers like Google Chrome or Safari; you need an alternative method, which we will introduce later in the text.
How to access the dark web
Although can access dark web through some secure browsers such as Freenet and the Invisible Internet Project, but Tor is by far the most popular and straightforward way to access the dark web. Tor is a proxy routing system that reroutes a user’s internet activity through multiple different dispersed IP addresses to conceal which computer the activity genuinely originates from. This makes it incredibly difficult to trace the traffic of a particular IP on the network, of course, this does not mean that the process is impossible.
Tor can be downloaded and installed from the official site on your laptop or PC, after which you will have the capability to access and browse the dark web. If a site ends with .onion, it can only be accessed through the Tor browser. However, it should be noted that the dark web cannot be searched using search engines (such as Google), which means you need to know in advance the dark web addresses you intend to visit. As for the list of these sites, you can obtain them through Reddit or Wiki.
It is also worth noting that the anonymity features of Tor come at a certain cost—the functionality and interface aesthetics are affected. Moreover, using the browser to navigate the “clearnet/surface web” can also be troublesome, as your IP address is not recognized, logging into sites like Netflix and Facebook often becomes very difficult.
How large is the dark web
According to a paper titled “The darkness online” published by King’s College London, there are approximately 300,000 addresses in the Tor network, connecting to about 205,000 web pages. However, this data is negligible compared to the 30 trillion web pages that Google had on the open web in 2013.
Currently, the number of daily connections in the Tor network is estimated to be a better standard for measuring the size of the dark web. Data shows that there are about 1.7 million daily connections in the Tor network, mainly distributed in the United States, Russia, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.
How do criminals use the dark web
The same study from King’s College London found that more than half of the 5,205 accessible websites on Tor are illegal.
Despite its noble vision of privacy, Tor has been accused of hiding criminal activities that the police need to see. Defenders of Tor point out that criminal activities have always been a part of the internet, and many of its uses are entirely legal in the era of mass state internet surveillance. As for terrorism, there is no evidence that violent extremists use or need Tor for communication.
However, different types of extremists may also thrive on the dark web, a recent example being the neo-Nazi white supremacist organization, Daily Stormer, which began to carry out illegal activities on the dark web after being expelled from the “clearnet” by hackers and activists.
In response, Tor issued a statement saying, “We are disgusted, angry, and shocked by what these racists are doing. We feel this way whenever the Tor network and software are used for malicious purposes.”
However, they also pointed out that if we also control who uses these tools, then we would not be able to build free and open-source tools to protect journalists, human rights activists, and ordinary people around the world.
On the dark web, the most obvious criminal activities are mainly focused on crimes such as drug trafficking or child pornography. But there are also a large number of other illegal activities, including the trade of malware, financial fraud activities using stolen credit card numbers, or hiring hackers to carry out targeted attacks on certain computers.
Why is the dark web still popular
One of the most common misconceptions we often hear is that only criminals and pedophiles use Tor, which is entirely incorrect! Although there is indeed a dark side to it, it cannot be completely negated on this account alone; it also has its positive aspects. Many different types of people use Tor. For instance, activists use Tor to evade censorship and provide anonymous information; the military uses Tor for secure communication and planning; families use Tor to protect their children and their privacy; journalists use Tor for case studies and to communicate securely with sources.
Professor at the University of Surrey and advisor to the European Cybercrime Centre, Alan Woodward, pointed out that before the Snowden incident, the number of people visiting the Tor network was about one million, and after, this figure soared to six million. Although there is other evidence to suggest that this number has now stabilized at two million active users.
Today, those who place a high value on privacy, or who need to maintain anonymity due to their position or location, may still be using Tor. For example, The Guardian has set up a website requiring whistleblowers to submit tip-off documents on the basis of a certain degree of anonymity. In summary, the dark web and Tor encompass a variety of things; they are acceptable for learning and enrichment, but do not have other thoughts, because any content from the dark web, whether involved in buying and selling or reposted to the surface web, is considered criminal activity.