How to Access the Dark Web
You may have heard the terms Tor and dark web in the media. However, accessing these sites is not so dangerous as it sounds. It’s actually fairly easy to get started.
The dark web is a collection of websites that aren’t found by search engines such as Google. It’s the part of the web where data and other information that is normally private is stored. For example email inboxes and emails along with online banking logins as well as Google Drive folders live on the deep web – they aren’t visible to users using a normal browser.
There are a myriad of websites on the dark web that are used for legitimate purposes. SecureDrop for instance, is a dark-web website that allows anonymous submission of sensitive information by whistleblowers. And there are also sites that assist people in buying and sell stolen credentials such as credit card numbers, passwords and social security numbers. These sites are called’marketplaces. The most famous examples are Silk Road, AlphaBay and many others.
The key to accessing the dark web is a system called Tor which routes your connection through a set of servers that are run by volunteers, which are distributed throughout the world. This makes it hard for anyone to trace you. Tor is named this way because the information it encrypts is processed through a variety of layers similar to the onion layering on a pizza, which helps to protect your anonymity.