What's inside the Dark web

Before getting into the topic , I'd like to introduce the the three levels of web :

• Surface web
• Deep web
• Dark web

SURFACE WEB

Which can be accessed by anyone from anywhere through internet is called surface web. Google, Wikipedia,Yahoo,etc are examples of surface web

DEEP WEB

Which can be accessed by only limited number of users is called deep web. It has restricted access. A few examples for this are your personal contents on social media sites like Facebook,Twitter etc ( your messages are only visible to you or anyone else with your login credentials and is not available for public )

DARK WEB

It comes under the category of deep web but the difference here is that it is completely anonymous, when you are in the dark web no one can know your IP address and no one knows the IP (original) address of the websites host.

Note: Dark web is part of deep web and both of them are not same

HOW DOES DARK WEB WORK ?

It mainly works on the principle of rerouting the data via THE ONION ROUTER network popularly known as TOR

The 3 nodes in TOR network

Entry Node : Where the data enters the TOR network, the data in the entry node is encapsulated, so that only the exit node can decapsulate it to get the destination address, this encapsulated data is then sent to a random intermediate node

 

Intermediate node : Several intermediate nodes are used to keep complete anonymity which encapsulates the data on every level, so that even if packet sniffing accurs at this level no one will know the source and destination address.

 

Exit Node : The intermediate node at the end sends the packet to exit node, where the data is decapsulated and sent to destination address, it has more responsibility than any other nodes as it will know the destination IP, because of this reason most of the users are suggested to use a VPN before connecting to TOR.

Now let's go into the main topic 

What's inside Dark web 

Instead of explaining this content , it's better to read some of the real life experiences which were shared by  some of them in the internet . I'd not like to mention there names instead I'd like to name them as person -A ,B,etc

Person-A

"A2A

Okay, this is going to be uncomfortable.

This is a time when I was in my engineering college and I used to mess around learning Ubuntu. There was a group of seniors who would be with me, teaching me. It used to be an unofficial study group. It was a fun class until one day.

One day a senior guy told the other guy about dark-web and we all got immediately interested. It was new to us. I was in first year. Barely out of school, and till that time, I found the world very rosy and beautiful. But that day after listening to all crazy stories about the dark web and surfing articles about what lurked in that world, we (they, not me. I was innocent!) decided to give it a try.

They opened some onion links and some tor links but for a long time nobody came up with anything controversial. Some websites were dead some were plain boring. And some just looked like ordinary chat-rooms with nothing much going on.

Then a guy actually hit the sweet spot. He landed on a website where some gory stuff was there. We all surrounded his laptop like it was a horror movie playing! But what I saw that day, I'd never forget in my life. I couldn't sleep for days because of it.

I saw some crazy-ass women, murdering animals.

There were videos of torture and murder. And the animals too weren't big ones, but small, tiny ones. Some were newly born kittens and some really cute puppies. There were videos featuring women crushing them with their heels, some more videos of the women asphyxiating them with bare hands, they were beautifully dressed up models but doing such gory stuff! I felt like killing them all. The guys stopped playing the videos, and everyone was near to puking.

The class was dismissed."

Person-B

"You might have heard this proverb ,”Curiosity kills the cat” That’s exactly what happened.

“ 5 Things you should never Google” , a YouTube video by Talko made me unconsciously click on it and one of the things listed was Dark Web (not to be confused with Deep web which consists of your everyday websites say Amazon,Netflix etc.)

So , I read the requisite details , downloaded Tor Browser and then there is this thing called “Hidden wiki” which is the access to this gory. So following are the things that I encountered:

• There are hundreds of pages dedicated to drugs like : UK weed, Weed heaven, Brain Magic etc. All the purchasing is done by only Bitcoin.
• A wonderful (just joking) bizarre website showcasing ammunitions ranging from AK-47 to grenades .
• Something called “Onion Browser, Clearnet” with a catchphrase “Access to the inaccessible”
• Some rare books , underground tunnel pathways to enter some important buildings, Wikileaks submission.
• Hiring Hitmans, recipes on how to cook human meat, small girls wearing hijabs ( semi-naked) and suicide videos.
• Hundreds of websites for buying US, UK citizenship .All requires Bitcoins.
• Then there was this page where it was “claimed” that it contained nudes of Kardashians, VS models and tonnes of Z listers who apparently haven’t shown enough of their bodies ! .
• Websites containing videos of animal abuse in all unimaginable ways. I was too scared as to what might I encounter, so I didn’t visit it.
• Hiring of high class escorts in US, UK, Canada.
• Worst of them bunch of pages dedicated to imbecile pedophiles, mutilation, abusing dead bodies etc.Basically I couldn’t muster the courage to read further.

Plot twist: Just as I was about to close the browser, deep down filled with disgust and had given up on humanity, a new page with a “html extension “HELLOTHEREKOUL.htm,” (my last name ) loaded on its own with the message :

'we see you.’ "

Person-C

"  Yes, I’ve ‘seen’ the dark web.

I used to work for a cyber security company, and part of their operations involved scouring the dark web, with bespoke webcrawlers and search bots, looking for potential threats to the security or reputation of countries, governments, corporations and certain powerful, important or wealthy individuals (it was a subscription service, and only those types of client could afford it).

Yes, there is a lot of nasty, potentially dangerous stuff on the dark web - sites selling hard-core drugs, firearms, stolen credit cards, child pornography, hacker software (‘exploit kits’), computer-virus-authoring software, etc. - and some fairly shady and unsavoury characters who run or access the sites on it.

But it is important to remember that the reality of the dark web is nowhere near its fictional depictions, as 

portrayed in dystopian cyberpunk novels and the like.  "

I think by this time you have got some clear cut idea on Dark web , therefore it's your risk to go into it only for the sake of anxiety .