Dark Web

The **Dark Web** is a part of the internet that is perhaps one of the greatest places to find anonymity on the internet. Most individuals are browsing the internet using the surface web. However, there are darker parts of the internet, usually only accessible by hackers, criminals, enthusiasts, or the occasional curious surface net goer. It is a lot of websites that are hidden from normal surface web. Using things such as tor, a user can access this part of the internet.

The Dark Web is infamous for the criminal and nefarious things that happen across different websites on the web. Things such as drug deals, human experiments, hit-men, child pornography and more. There is a thing on there called the Silk Road which is an illegal black-market for drugs. Often times services and products are bought with a digital currency called Bitcoin.

## Dark Web vs Deep Web

Often times the two terms the Deep Web and Dark Web are used interchangeably. However, these two terms are two different things entirely. The Deep Web is defined as part of the World Wide Web that has content is not indexed, or stored, by normal search engines.  However, the Dark Web includes a much smaller part of the Deep Web.

The Deep Web is accessed through networks like Tor, Freenet and I2P. Users often refer to the Dark Web as OnionLand because of the domain's suffix, .onion and the technique of onion routing to keep traffic anonymous.

## Content

The Dark web is host to a number of websites including sites that distribute child pornography, the black markets, as whistle blowing sites and political forums.  However, that is not all that is on the Dark Web. Some of it is bad, but some of it is also good. And some of the things that people have heard about were actually hoaxes and never existed on the dark web at all.

#### **Black Markets and Bitcoin**

The Dark web is almost synonymous with the black market. The black market is known for selling illicit products and services. Services and products that are rumored to be sold on the Dark web are drugs, cyber arms, weapons, counterfeit money, stolen credit card information, forged documents and Ids, and other.

 A large part of the drug trade online is the result of the silk road. This was an online market place where individuals could go to buy illegal drugs with Bitcoin, or virtual currency that is used for services and products across the dark web. It has been removed multiple times, but keeps re surfacing with new versions of the website.

There are often also hacker services provided on the Dark web. These may be done in groups or individually. There are reports of hackers tracking pedophiles on the Dark web, hacking banking and other financial institutions.

#### **Phishing Scams and Fraud Services**

There are a number of scamming and fraudulent websites on the Dark web as well. Many of these sites can steal the information of users who use the Dark web including credit card, paypal, and other personal information.

#### **Pornography**

The Dark web is known for the pornography riddled throughout it. Pornography is not in itself illegal, but the kind on the Dark web is. The kind that is prevalent on the Dark web is child pornography, crush fetishes which includes the sexualized torture and killing of animals, and revenge porn. Often times law enforcement will try to monitor and shut down websites that distribute this type of content by placing malware on it to infect the users' computers.

#### **Cicada 3301**

There are often times puzzles that pop up on the Dark web. One such puzzle was by an organization called Cicada 3301. On six separate occasions this organization has posted puzzles and code encryption for users to follow. No one knows what the purpose is of these puzzles, but there is a lot of speculation that it is the government looking for code breakers, a cult, and many more.

#### **Unproven Content**

There are a lot of rumors about the horrific things found on the Dark web that have not been proven. Some things that have been rumored to be on the Dark web are things such as torture, hitmen for hire, live webcam killings called Red Rooms after the Japanese animation. This animation was based off of Urban Legends where people are placed in a room and killed on live film. There are also rumored to be sites about cannabalism where people deal human meat and have recipes for cooking women.

## Anonymity

#### **Anonymity on the Dark web**

The Dark web is a great place for users to remain anonymous. The whole reason behind the Dark web is to remain anonymous while surfing the World Wide Web. Using Tor, users are allowed to surf the web without being monitored.

#### **How your anonymity may be at risk**

Although users who regularly use Tor may gain anonymity from browsing the Dark web, the anonymity of surface web users may be at risk. It is very easy for criminals to gain access to personal information and not be caught because they know how to remain anonymous on the web.

## References

1. Deep Web. (2018, April 5). In *Wikipedia*. Retrieved April 5, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep\_web
2. Dark Web. (2018, April 5). In *Wikipedia*. Retrieved April 5, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark\_web
3. Darknet market. (2018, April 5). In *Wikipedia*. Retrieved April 5, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet\_market
4. Cicada 3301. (2018, April 5). In *Wikipedia*. Retrieved April 5, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada\_3301
5. Red Room. (2018, April 5). In *Rational Wiki*. Retrieved April 5, 2018, from https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Red\_room#On\_the\_internet
6. Ross, J. (2014, May 15). The Dark Web and the Power of Anonymity. In *Huffington Post*. Retrieved April 5, 2018, from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-ross/the-dark-web-and-the-powe\_b\_5323974.html

1. ↑ Deep Web. (2018, April 5). In *Wikipedia*. Retrieved April 5, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep\_web
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Dark Web. (2018, April 5). In *Wikipedia*. Retrieved April 5, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark\_web
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet\_market
4. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada\_3301#Resolution
5. ↑ https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Red\_room#On\_the\_internet
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-ross/the-dark-web-and-the-powe\_b\_5323974.html