ORIGIN OF DARK WEB

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infographics and never forgt another password and keep all your online accounts secure a certain amount of mystery still surrounds what has become known as the dark web the very name evokes images of an underworld a kind of catacomb where scoundrels hideout and human depravity awaits us around every corner but research has shown that the dark web is perhaps not as dark as many of us imagine yes one can certainly go to this place and acquire a handful of illegal substances and yes if a person.

so chooses they can scour the dark web and find images that most of the world would find repellent but let\'s just say you won\'t find hitman for hire all over the dark web nor as much video violence than we might have thought the question is though who on earth came up with this idea in the first place we\'ve been through this in other shows so we\'ll make it short and we\'re talking about what the dark web actually is you see the internet as most of us know it the bit you\'re using right now is only a small part of the web sources don\'t agree on how much but it\'s said that part of the web that we can access using ordinary browsers is only about 10% of the entire thing you can also find sources that say it\'s 4% or even 1% still it\'s not there are about 1.8 billion active web sites on the net although again you can find sources that give a different number much higher sometimes this doesn\'t of course mean that the rest of the web is the dark web in full of dark marketplaces otherwise we might have cause for concern what it means is that the rest of the web which we\'ll call the Deep Web is used by private companies governments etc it\'s invisible to you well it is if you can\'t

hack into it or are not activelylegally using it think about your email online banking company servers these aren\'t exactly searchable on the web so of course the Deep Web is way bigger than the navigable web okay so you understand that what about the dark web this is a place within the Deep Web that\'s also hidden but can be accesses using something called the tor browser you can use this browser along with a VPN or a virtual private network to access the dark web you might do this if you\'re an activist and want anonymity such as people that criticize governments whose modus operandi shows no mercy for political.

dissidents but you might also enter the dark web so you can access what are sometimes called dark sites here\'s where you might find someone selling serotonin enhancing pills by the bagful or once\'s of white powder where you might find hackers for hire or someone to chat with about your strange predilection for drinking your own blood by the wineglass as we said the dark web might not be as demonic as movies or some politicians depict but you can read stories in the British press about how the young generation now buy their illicit substances they\'re more than in the streets these days or how some people were arrested by the FBI for distributing images that 99.9% of viewers would find disturbing okay you get the picture but now you must be thinking if this stuff goes on why would anyone in their right mind have created.

it in the first place well to answer that we must look to the US military let\'s remember that the internet itself was a byproduct of military technologies as was much of the technology we take for granted today it was in the mid 1990s that the u.s. wanted their intelligence operatives to have a place a virtual place where they could communicate with total anonymity they started working on something called tor an acronym that stands for the Onion Router but why give this to the people wasn\'t that just madness according to the BBC the military did this because if more people were using it then it would be harder to spot the activity of operatives among all the other noise foreign policy dives even deeper into the history of the dark web and here we\'ll summarize in 1969 a student at the University of California sent a message between computers connected by ARPANET this was the beginning of the web as we know it and it was developed by the Pentagon\'s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the next few years more computers started connecting with each other on secret networks and these were sometimes called dark Nets this might not sound like much to you but it was a breakthrough in secret communications then we see the internet explode in the ensuing decades only part of this Internet is a haven for illegal activity in the 1990s we sell a lot of illegal file sharing and we\'re told this set off a tsunami of darknet activity the people sharing the files were using data\' havens that couldn\'t be shut down by the authorities so even before the dark web as we know it today there was still a hidden part of the Internet

then in March 2000 we saw the release of something called free net this is a place you could access with anonymity and get your hands on files legal or illegal free net is a near-perfect Anarchy the irish grader proudly told the new york times you see it wasn\'t about sharing and distributing dodgy content but some people felt that there should be a place in the internet free from censorship and the prying eyes of the government what we\'re trying to say is that long before tor people were trying to create room in the internet where people could operate without being surveilled then in 2002 we got tor to protect those American operatives but it only took a few years for sites accessible through tor to become filled with copyrighted material from Hollywood movies two versions of Microsoft Office it became a trading ground for illicit material and people loved it because they could go there with the assurance that they wouldn\'t get arrested imagine buying stolen goods on the street buthaving the superpower to become invisible things heated up in 2009 when a guy that called himself Satoshi Nakamoto mined

the first Bitcoin a virtual currency that was untraceable now you can launder cash spend your Bitcoin inside the darknet it was a marriage made in heaven in 2011 we saw the first modern dark net marketplace in the Silk Road named after ancient trading routes in Asia there you could find an array of legal and illegal goods and services but it only lasted short of two years and the creator was eventually sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole but as wired pointed out in 2015 it\'s not as if everyone using tors accessing the dark web in fact .

the number is quite small and though you can find illegal things there you can also find them on the regular web most people sharing illegal images or videos use the normal web not the dark web according to Wired whose writer researched the dark web for a number of years yes you can find depravity there but it\'s also full of doctors giving advice they might not give out in the open it\'s a place where people can talk and not worry about their careers where others can talk about a disease they have that they dare not talk about out in the open and as we said it\'s used by a lot of people who need to discuss issues in a country that would likely lock them up for discussing those issues this includes some people inside the USA who would rather not have their words watched former NSA contractor Edward Snowden famously said that the government was working hard to anonymize tor users but it wasn\'t 

always successful we always know that the FBI has had some success finding criminal activity there but these are usually sting operations not just pinpointing a person after a share or sale we say this because some of you might be asking why the government hasn\'t gone to greater lengths to close us all down there are many reasons but one is that it\'s still useful in terms of the greater good - is that the governments of the world have shown that when things get murky in the dark web then authorities will swoop

it\'s not impenetrable you might have some anonymity but you\'re not a ghost you\'re merely wearing a sheet over your head the US government supports the dark web and funds it because as we said it\'s useful at the same time it\'s not easy to take down a decentralized network there isn\'t an off switch this network is spread across the globe and protected by strong cryptography it\'s almost like ether or a living breathing entity whose plexus of veins are threaded throughout the world you might also ask yourself what would happen if somehow tor wasn\'t available if somehow part of the dark web was blacked out with the darkness disappear no it wouldn\'t it would appear somewhere else the government has shut down dark net sites and rightly so but more will just pop up the government could try and get rid of the tor browser but as we said it has no reason for doing this Chinaactually has been successful in blocking .

the tor browser but other governments have failed this is what motherboard says about blocking the browser governments can block access to VPN services by blocking access from IP addresses linked to VPN providers blocking tor is more complex and requires identifying and blocking the destination nodes traffic travels through rather than the URL or IP address most governments that allow more or less free-speech agree that of the two and a half million tor users very few of them are doing nefarious things in the dark web believe it or not sellers in the dark web agreed in 2018 to stop selling the powerful and deadly opioid fentanyl many operators agree that it was just too dangerous and perhaps they also knew that it would no doubt bring unwanted attention to their market places in conclusion the dark web like any street in any town does contain some rather unethical people but for the most part what you see there is just innocent folks protecting their identity.

it would be crazy for any government to try and close their entire park just because some guys sell their substances there at night in the back corner but if things get too bad you can be assured someone will go after them meanwhile the rest of the people that use this park for late-night anonymous chats can do so without harassment.

however the dark web started it\'s here to stay which means that you better have some serious protection against anyone who\'s looking to exploit it for nefarious purposes don\'t forget you are their target we at the infographics show have been keeping ourselves protected using - Lane - Lane is the one and only tool you need to not just keep your personal info and digital accounts safe and secure but their dark web monitoring services will immediately notify you if it finds any of your personal information for sale on an online.