As the name suggests, the Dark Web is such a type of content that is encrypted and is not indexed by search engines but requires the specific software or authorizations to access that content. This content does not appear through regular browsers. It is often confused with the deep web. Deep web refers to web content that is not searchable by search engines.
How the Dark Web Works?
Since the dark webs are not accessed by regular browsers, the specific browser has access to these websites. One of the famous browsers for such content is Tor. Dar Web content contains the anonymous message boards, the online market place of illegal goods like drugs, exchange of stolen private and finical data and many other illegal contents. The sales of the black market and reviews and ratings to online sellers like eBay, Amazon, etc. are also conducted through these websites.
The businesses that do not want to reveal their privacy statements and want to conduct their businesses anonymously use dark webs. To take the reviews from the banned areas of different countries, the journalist seeks to take interviews from the people of that country through these dark webs as these can’t be monitored by the states. All the illegal sellers that are selling illegal products like drug-dealer, hackers and child pornography peddlers conduct all their deals through the dark web. Advertisements of the illegal operatives for their services are also conducted in these ways because it can not be done on the traditional channels.
Type of Content
The research was hosted by Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth, England in December 2019. He published that the most common type of content on the dark web is child pornography which is followed by the black markets. The individual sites having the highest traffic are dedicated to the botnet and used to steal the personal data from different accounts or organizations.
Political discussion forums are also present under many whistleblowing websites. The most prolific websites among the dark webs are fraud-related websites which are just spam and bitcoin which is for frauded transactions.
The 3% of the traffic of the Dark Web is in the Tor network. Dar Web also has many networks of hackers and hacking websites. Cybercrimes and to steal the private data of the financial institutions are provided on these dark webs.
Dark Web Sites
There are various dark web sites that are looking similar to the other websites but there are many important differences. One of the important differences for dark websites is that their names are ended in .onion instead of normal ending in .com or .co etc. this indicated that the dark web sites use the special domain that is hidden from normal searches and is reachable through Tor network. Normal browsers can also have access to these websites, but it is only possible with the use of special proxies.
The URLs of the dark web sites are also unique and are very difficult to remember. The URLs of such sites are not the English alphabetical words instead it is a combination of random letters and numbers. As the dark web sites are used by the scammers, so from the wrath of the victims they constantly change their addresses and websites. Whenever the owner of the scammed financial website wants to withdraw the money, that website suddenly disappears.
One of the major factors in growing commerce on the dark web is bitcoin. Bitcoin has provided a platform for two parties to conduct the transaction between them without knowing their identities of each other.
Services provided by Dark Web Sites
A large number of illegal services are provided through these dark websites. Those services that could not be published through the traditional channels are propagated through the dark web. Some of them are listed below
- Botnets
- Darknet Markets
- Hacking Services
- Fraud Services
- Financing
- Phishing and Scams
- Illegal Pornography
- Terrorism
- Puzzles
- Hoaxes and Unverified Content
- Social Media