What Is Dark-web?

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What Is Dark-web?

There is also an internet network that is somewhat different type of internet or say web that we use on daily basis. This type of internet usually host malware/illegal or explicit type of website-networks that are hidden from the common web. This type of internet is widely known as dark-web, dark-net or deep-web. All the websites on dark-web are highly encrypted for the purpose of security or say anonymity (Mirim CIhodariu, 2019).
A person can become a virtual-ghost by connecting to the dark-web as all the tracing and tracking along with the IP-addresses of the users are hidden carefully for the sake of maximum identity/digital protection (Gehl, 2019). However this high level of digital-freedom cannot be healthy as dark-net is not right now as compared to back when it was developed, a lot have changed in the dark-net and sadly for the worse.

IMPLICATIONS OF DARK-WEB

Due to the high level of privacy and digital-security offered by dark-net it has taken a turn for the worst in last couple of decades. It is a crushing challenge to identify the owner of any dark-web hosted website due to the fact that the IP-addresses are regularly changed/bounced to different geographic-locations to prevent any type of tracking.
This freedom encouraged the dark-net users to express the inner dark-side of the human nature in the form of illegal and un-moral activities/services/content that is available on dark-web now a days. People on dark-web are now selling-drugs, firearms, stolen-items, providing explicit content and other illegal services and accepting anonymous payments in the form of Bitcoins

People from all over the world are engaging regularly in malicious-activities on dark-net and are buying/selling illegal-services/products on digital-black-markets on dark-web and there seems to be absolutely no-end to what a person-can find on dark-web now a days.
The facility of dark-net was developed by experts with the good intensions of secure-communication with the military-assets or other high-profile sensitive-information containing parties/bodies belonging to different regions.
But that has now taken the turn for the worse, and to tackle this issue ,official-government and private cyber-security-institutes like CIA, FBI, Interpol are regularly conducting digital-raids on websites and are taking-down websites that provide illegal-services/content to dark-net users to maintain the dark-net safety (Gehl, 2019).


Below figure illustrate the content present on both types of the internet.
Figure 1: Content present on surface and dark-web

WORKING OF DARK-WEB AND HOW TO CONNECT WITH IT

Before we talk about benefits and drawbacks associated with the use of dark-net we must first discuss and understand how it works. As like any technological-facility there are both pros and cons to dark-web depending on the type of person using it. It goes without saying that everyone should use dark-web if it is for the educational or other legit-purposes like for the sake of just digital-privacy. As it is both illegal and un-moral to use dark-web for malicious-activities and a person can face serious-consequences by taking part in malicious-activities on dark-web or by just connecting to it. There are a couple of steps and required tools that a user must have to connect with the dark-net. Below are the details of the tools a person willing to connect with dark-web must have (Kacy Zurkus, 2018). 

A VPN software

We all know what VPN’s are, we use them often to meet our uncensored internet surfing needs. Virtual Private Network (VPN) software comes in handy when there is restriction for visiting a certain website from the ones among us who love to visit some entertainment related websites that are restricted in their regions or by internet owners. Also some tech-savvy users who are more concerned about their digital-security/privacy and don’t want their current location to be revealed or websites to track them heavily rely on good capability VPN’s.
VPN softwares are highly popular and are used by two major types of user’s group. First group of users are the ones who want to their online-activities to be private and the other group of users like VPN softwares as they allow mass download of media, i.e. by torrents. So the first step for connecting to the dark-web is having a reliable VPN for personal-protection.

There are thousands of VPN softwares from most of them are totally free to use, but to choose wisely is the key as most VPNs can also store our personal-data for un-ethical purposes. Therefore always choosing a reputable and quality VPN is a must (Gehl, 2019).

TOR-Browser

Second on the list on the quest to connect with dark-web is downloading and installing the TOR-browser or often referred to as the onion-router. This tor-browser is vital in order to connect with the dark-net as normal internet-browsers cannot open the special onion-links of the dark-web. An example of normal website present on web-surface and on dark-net can be (Broadband, 2019).
Web-surface: www.google.com
Dark-net: https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/

The working of tor-browser and how it encrypts the user-data to connect with the dark-web can be seen in the above figure.

Dark-net can be both a useful and a scary place for internet-users and it without a doubt have many benefits If a person uses it for the right reasons and purposes like educational and data gathering but when the dark-web is used for illegal/immoral purposes it both risk the digital- activities and online-identity to be uncovered by the government-authorities like FBI. Dark-net was without a doubt developed by US-government for the purpose of secure-communication with the military-assets but as the studies, evidence suggests it has been used for all types of illegal/activities a person can think of. But we have to act responsibly if we visit the dark-net to make sure we pay attention to our digital security.