This internet browsing is taking place on

a layer of the internet called the Surface Web. 

But beneath it are many more layers of the

internet, in what’s known as the Deep Web. 

At the top of these layers are websites that

can be accessed, but can’t be found by doing 

a search on Google or Bing. 


1. Think online banking and government databases

pages that are password encrypted. 

But what if you keep going down, all the way

to the bottom of the Deep Web? 

Well, here you’ll find the Dark Web. 


Here, users communicate through encrypted messages and can buy or sell anything with total anonymity. 

It’s been called the ‘wild west’ of

the internet because operating here in the 

shadows are extremists, criminals and trolls. 

So, where did the Dark Web come from and how


2. does it work? 

Well firstly the Dark Web is not a place but

a term that describes parts of the internet 

that hide your identity and location. 

The Dark Web’s infrastructure was created

in the 1970s at the same time as the internet 

itself - but to utilize it, you needed darknet

software. 


Enter the U.S. Naval Research Lab who created,

back in the early 2000s, one of the first 

and still the most popular darknet software

- Tor. 


It was created for a number of reasons, which

included providing the U.S. Navy’s intelligence 

officers with the means to maneuver through

the internet without being recognized or traced. 

But, to really give you an understanding of what the


Dark Web is like we need to explore it first hand..

So I’ve downloaded Tor, which looks like a normal

web browser and seems to behave like one too. 

I can visit any site I like, but unlike normal

web browsers which would register my IP address 

straight away, the Tor browser bounces my

request to enter the site via several computers 

around the world encrypting and decrypting

my identification as it goes so that no one 

knows where the request has come from. 

Now that I’m browsing the internet anonymously,


certain websites have become accessible. 

Sites that are much like the infamous Silk

Road. 


The Silk Road was the one of

the first online black markets 

where you could buy drugs,

guns and child pornography. 

Two years after starting the site the founder,

Ross Ulbricht, was arrested in 2013 and sentenced to life in prison for money laundering, drug trafficking, hacking and fraud. 


This was quickly followed by a shutdown of

its successor Silk Road 2.0 along with similar 

sites such as ‘Project Black Flag’ and

‘Black Market Reloaded’. 


There are even reports that the FBI has hacked

into Tor itself, which subsequently saw the 

browser’s usage drop by nearly 50%. 

This all gives the impression that the authorities are fighting back, but closing down one or  two online markets has simply cleared the way for its competitors If you didn’t want to use the Tor browser ,there’s I2P or Freenet. 

Instead of Silk Road 2.0, there’s now Dream, Agora or

Alphabay and they all provide the same services. 

• The Dark Web however is not just an eBay for

illegal purchases. 

• It’s also used by radical extremists to

communicate and spread propaganda. 

But not all activity going on down in the

Dark Web is illegal. 

• Tor, for instance, receives 60% of its backing

from the U.S. State Department and the Department  of Defense to act as a secure network for both government agencies and political dissidents  fighting oppressive regimes. 


• Over the past decade, the Dark Web has empowered

• activists to spread news during the Arab Spring 

and encourage whistleblowers to release information. 

• The Dark Web as a tool to help journalists

uncover the truth was made popular by Wikileaks. 

• Now news organizations such as The New York

Times and The Guardian all host Dark Web drop 

• sites for uploading anonymously leaked tips

and documents. 

• It’s also helped domestic-violence victims

hide from online stalkers and allowed ordinary 


citizens to surf the web without being tracked

by advertisers or even the government. 

Which leaves us with a great dilemma… 

If the authorities try (and succeed) in shutting

down the Dark Web and the criminal activity 

that it supports, they’ll also be adversely

affecting all the people that use it for social benefit. 

The question remains whether internet freedom

and privacy, for legitimate and sometimes 

life-saving reasons, are worth protecting

while this vast criminal underworld operates 

alongside it, inside the dark web.  


What's The Dark web Reality 


1. The idea of the dark web tends to bring to mind images of hoodie clad hackers in dark basements like some kind of parallel economy or the Illuminati of the Internet. Let me try to disabuse you of some of those notions. The reality is a little more mundane to access the dark web. You need something like Tor, which is a piece of anonymity software that was actually developed by the U.

S. government initially to protect military communications. Once you're on the dark web, you're essentially going to find four different things. The first is drug markets. The dark web first broke into the popular consciousness with the narcotics market. The Silk Road. And there are now countless imitators.

2. Law enforcement, though, is shutting them down faster and with greater regularity. There's also hacking tools. This is self-explanatory, but it's not like Amazon or eBay. You don't know exactly what you're downloading. Usually when you buy malware or different phishing tools, there's also personal data leaked from hacks. People sell lists of email addresses,

3. Social Security numbers, passwords, user names, you name it. If you ever get spam or phishing emails, there's a good chance that sender got your details from a dark web. There's also child sex abuse material. That's easily the most sickening part of all of this. And perhaps the largest part of this economy to get any of this stuff. There's a good chance people have to

4. hand over at least some personal data these days. Law enforcement has access to a lot of that. Cops from around the world have shut down three major markets over the past year and arrested hundreds of people based on evidence that they left online. So while the dark web might seem like an invisible, anonymous place, the truth is a lot more complicated. Someone shares their email address,

their postal information to send drugs or details of a cryptocurrency wallet. There's a good chance that's going to pretty quickly wind up on a law enforcement server at FBI headquarters.