The Dark Web Demystified

13 THINGS

Michelle Crouch

1 THE DARK WEB is a collection of Internet sites that you can’t find with a regular search engine and that people can visit anonymously. As opposed to the ‘surface web’ (the searchable part of the Internet that anyone can access), the dark web is a subset of the ‘deep web’, which houses password-protected medical and financial records, pages behind paywalls, and cloud-based email accounts such as Gmail.

2 BECAUSE IT’S anonymous and encrypted, the dark web is (perhaps unsurprisingly) a hotbed of criminal activity. On dark web marketplaces, there are listings to buy drugs, firearms, porn, exotic animals, credit card numbers and more—complete with photos, gushing descriptions, and user reviews. There are also hate sites, conspiracy theory forums, and how-to tutorials for every illegal activity imaginable.

3 ALTHOUGH SIMPLY accessing the dark web is perfectly legal, it can be risky because the dark web doesn’t have as many built-in protections as the surface web does. Surfing the dark web can expose you to malicious software, hackers, bots, and scams.