Have You Ever Visited The Deep Web?

Lightbulb Sun

I haven't myself although I did download the tor browser once.

Deleted it immediately as it was very slow.

For those that have been on the deep web, did you find anything interesting? Does anyone visit it regularly?

zl1whqvjs75cdy

Kinda half interested in it but scared of what I'll see there so haven't been too proactive about getting there.

Holsten

It's basically the criminals internet.

Guns, drugs, hit men, forged documents, etc...

Stavros Murphy

Andy McNab swears by it. Never been there myself, mainly due to cluelessness. And the whole "generally being legit", as opposed to not..

holystungun9

Stavros Murphy wrote: »

Andy McNab swears by it. Never been there myself, mainly due to cluelessness. And the whole "generally being legit", as opposed to not..

Stavros Murphy???

kryogen

I like it, there is an alternate boards there, very dark place

Lightbulb Sun

Stavros Murphy wrote: »

Andy McNab swears by it. Never been there myself, mainly due to cluelessness. And the whole "generally being legit", as opposed to not..

What's Mr. McNab using it for? Research for his novels?

OneEightSeven

Go to the Hidden Wiki. I found a forum for paedophiles where they openly confess their love for children. It's the true shíthole of the Internet.

MS.ing

never even heard about it till now right here

but Instinctively knew of it just never knew there an actual name for it, just thought it would be places on the net that serious criminals would use, paedo rings, terrorist organisations, mafia that sort of stuff. hidden behind layers of passwords and encryption

Stavros Murphy

Lightbulb Sun wrote: »

What's Mr. McNab using it for? Research for his novels?

Noo, he tracks down stuff, and things, jasus, read the books, he's always on the deep web - could be his "Mr Stone" lad doing the Uber-Googling, come to think of it. Spy-stuff, deep web, Jason Bourne, shaken not stirred, "swap you for a bag of weed" - that sort of thing.

wonderfulname

It's interesting for a nose, it's like an older, illegitimate internet, or it was about 2 years ago when i last looked, the tor network has a web directory, most of the sites are very basic html pages to conserve bandwidth, sites experience (d) a lot of downtime, it's populated with geeks, the illegally enterprising, activists, and scum, there’s not much to it. Be careful where you go and be careful what you do using the tor browser, you can just assume you're being monitored, nobody will know who you are, but if you sign in to your email or check your bank balance through it someone will likely get those details.

My name is URL

I tried to but I got stuck

TheFarrier

How does one access this deep web ??

Never heard of it before now, it has piqued my interest slightly.
Is it worth a snoop around??

kjl

Yeah, I've been on Silk Road.
It was good for a while but not reliable anymore.

There is a lot of child porn on it, and forums where people trade images and videos.

jane82

Im deeply interested and frightfully scared at the same time. Is this just a method of unblocking all the blocked sites or is this a whole different internet?

Holsten

jane82 wrote: »

Im deeply interested and frightfully scared at the same time. Is this just a method of unblocking all the blocked sites or is this a whole different internet?

It is websites that are not indexed by search engines like Google.

That's it.

Vivienne23

That's odd you bring it up I visited for the first time Last Saturday , I downloaded a tor browser app ages ago but it never worked seen it on the ipad and said I'd chance it,got on anyway took ages to get to the directory (prob coz I hadn't a clue what I was doing )

Interesting to see the stuff you can buy , forged notes , guns , hit men but I am sceptical a good percentage of them must be scams (my own opinion ) would you trust a criminal selling this stuff online to take your payment and send you stuff ? I certainly wouldn't , will definitely go on again for a look sometime but its a painstakingly slow process to get to where you want ,

One thing I did see which I thought was shocking was PayPal accounts that you could buy and "cash in" , I.e hacked accounts with an amount for sale , I shuddered to think that could be me someday ...cue change of password it's mad that there's a part of the net that is so twisted and illegal that most people don't know exist

zl1whqvjs75cdy

Mostly stuff law abiding folk don't really want to see I think.

gumbo1

Is there a link? How exactly does one go about accessing the deep web?

Holsten

Download the TOR browser so you can access .onion websites and away you go.

The Backwards Man

To me it's a lot like Waterford. I have absolutely zero interest in ever going there.

Legs.Eleven

Never heard of it. Presumed if I just stuck anything into the Googelator that I could find any website that way. Never tested it as I don't think I could handle what I'd find.

Stavros Murphy

holystungun9 wrote: »

Stavros Murphy???

That's a very respectable name, I'll have you know. I've had worse.

John Mason

They use it in house of cards to get hacked telephone records and transcripts of text messages and conversations

gumbo1

Holsten wrote: »

Download the TOR browser so you can access .onion websites and away you go.

Don't really want to download a browser. What if it's full of spyware and the like? Actually the more I think about it the less interested I get and the more the paranoia grows!

BillyMitchel

I have zero idea how to get on it. I'd be afraid in case I clicked on something I shouldn't and the door gets kicked in! Just because your paranoid it doesn't mean it won't happen!

Would some of the links on Reddits spacedicks count as the dark web? Half that stuff should be in the deepest darkest corners of the web.

Adamantium

It is basically want the internet was in the beginning. Totally unmoderated. No "safe" zones. A lovecraft nightmare.

Here is a link from reddit detailing what users have found on it...

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1873tw/what_is_the_thing_which_you_came_across_in_the/

Beware even reading this.

Here's a messed up subculture:

There was a screen shot of a forum full of people that were HIV positive. They told stories of how they wanted to infect more and more people...its pretty ****ed...

There is lot of supposed hitmen (probably college aged scammers), Silk Road for buying and selling Drugs and the whole set up guarantess virtual anoymity. Although FBI and the like monitor the exits, there isn't anything they could do.

You can buy/get anything if you want it.
EDIT: For those wondering, Tor is essentially a super-secure line to the Internet. Pretty much entirely untraceable. So it's a breeding ground for child pornography, illegal weapons, sex trafficking, and any drug you could think of. It's terrifying.

Duggy747

Massive amount of stuff on it but it's largely trivial and boring stuff beyond the hacking, guns, drugs, supposed hitmen for hire and forgery notes / passports / ID cards / etc.

There's a few child porn forums referenced in hidden wiki which obviously you don't even think of going near.

Hidden wiki on the subject makes for some extremely grim reading.

eamonnq

I am dying to have look on it now.......but I probably won't.

hfallada

Looks like OP is loving the new season of House of Cards.

Flippyfloppy

So basically Cameron's agreement with google to block hideous websites is worth zilch?

The Th!ng

The net is like an ocean, much of what happens is below the surface.

Lightbulb Sun

hfallada wrote: »

Looks like OP is loving the new season of House of Cards.

Haha, I'm probably the most out of touch person with regards to TV shows. Think I heard of it through wikipedia.

BillyMitchel

Can someone give a step by step guide on how to get on it? Is it like a special search engine or what's the craic?

I'll probably end up bottling it though.

calanus

gumbo1 wrote: »

Is there a link? How exactly does one go about accessing the deep web?

www.thedeepweb.com

Holsten

BillyMitchel wrote: »

Can someone give a step by step guide on how to get on it? Is it like a special search engine or what's the craic?

I'll probably end up bottling it though.

http://bit.ly/1cz3TW7

PizzamanIRL

Never heard of it until now. Don't want to go on to it either. Would I like to see child porn & gore videos, buy weapons, drugs or other illegal stuff? No.

B.A._Baracus

Never visted the "deep" side of the Internet and never will. Would rather not click on some messed up child porn image or something.

The Th!ng

https://www.torproject.org/index.html.en

https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en

I'd heard of it yeah but wouldn't have the interest in going about it
If I need a hitman for someone with appalling grammar, I'm sure I'll find it :pac:

Oat23

Went on it a few times after seeing the Silk Road AMA on reddit, but I haven't been on it in months. I ended up on a Brazilian forum (looked a bit like craigslist but you could reply to listings and the posts would show underneath). It seemed to be pretty busy. I translated some of the stuff and from what I could make out, it was a child trafficking board. People were posting age, names, heights etc. along with a @tormail address to email if interested. I felt sick and I hope it was all fake, but it looked real

No pictures, thankfully. It was just a text board and I copied/pasted some lines into a translator.

It isn't all bad from what I know. There is a good side to the deep web and it is invaluable to many people living in countries like Iran, China etc.

Everything is clearly marked there, it isn't like this web, where people link to shock websites or whatever. If there is going to be CP on the other end of a link it states that clearly. If you want to go and check it out, don't be worried about accidentally clicking a link that could get you in trouble.

HighClass

It sounds cool until you go on it. It's pretty boring and really slow loading for the most part. As far as the child pron stuff goes I've been on it a handful of times and never come across any, it's not like there is pictures and stuff plastered all over it.

Genghiz Cohen

To access the Deep Web you need to use TOR.
TOR, in a nutshell, encrypts your internet so that it will be accepted by other computers on the TOR net. You cannot access TOR websites without having the proper encryption.
Your internet requests are bounced around between TOR computers (called Relays) until they either hit their destination inside the TOR net or a computer on the TOR net unencrypts it and makes a request to the regular internet (referred to as the Clear Web).

This is the power of TOR, an encrypted request is bounced around making it very difficult to trace back to it's origin, even if the request goes out onto the Clear Web.

TOR is very simple to use, you download the open source TOR proxy (https://www.torproject.org/).
This sets up a new connection on your computer that is configured to encrypt and send data to the TOR network. You can either tell your current browser to use the TOR connection, or you can use the supplied browser.

Using the supplied browser is recommended from and ease of use and security standpoint.

Accessing sites is a little bit more awkward than on the Clean Web. URLs look like this: http://kpvz7ki2v5agwt35.onion
If you try to hit that without TOR, nothing will happen.
The addresses are hard to use and they change often so you need search engines or services like DuckDuckGo on the Deep Web to keep track of everything. Assuming the sites themselves allow the search engines to index them.

Remember, looking at the Deep Web, mostly, isn't a crime. Some of the sites with child porn are noted on the Hidden Wiki so they are easy to avoid, I've (thankfully) never seen any while looking around.


It is a very useful tool for fighting government oppression. Since Syria and Egypt erupted the need for Relays has sky-rocketed.
If you are using Android Orbot will get you on TOR on your phone.

freewheeler

The Backwards Man wrote: »

To me it's a lot like Waterford. I have absolutely zero interest in ever going there.

Promise? :rolleyes:

BillyMitchel

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

To access the Deep Web you need to use TOR.
TOR, in a nutshell, encrypts your internet so that it will be accepted by other computers on the TOR net. You cannot access TOR websites without having the proper encryption.
Your internet requests are bounced around between TOR computers (called Relays) until they either hit their destination inside the TOR net or a computer on the TOR net unencrypts it and makes a request to the regular internet (referred to as the Clear Web).

This is the power of TOR, an encrypted request is bounced around making it very difficult to trace back to it's origin, even if the request goes out onto the Clear Web.

TOR is very simple to use, you download the open source TOR proxy (https://www.torproject.org/).
This sets up a new connection on your computer that is configured to encrypt and send data to the TOR network. You can either tell your current browser to use the TOR connection, or you can use the supplied browser.

Using the supplied browser is recommended from and ease of use and security standpoint.

Accessing sites is a little bit more awkward than on the Clean Web. URLs look like this: http://kpvz7ki2v5agwt35.onion
If you try to hit that without TOR, nothing will happen.
The addresses are hard to use and they change often so you need search engines or services like DuckDuckGo on the Deep Web to keep track of everything. Assuming the sites themselves allow the search engines to index them.

Remember, looking at the Deep Web, mostly, isn't a crime. Some of the sites with child porn are noted on the Hidden Wiki so they are easy to avoid, I've (thankfully) never seen any while looking around.


It is a very useful tool for fighting government oppression. Since Syria and Egypt erupted the need for Relays has sky-rocketed.
If you are using Android Orbot will get you on TOR on your phone.

This post makes it sound tempting. What's the craziest thing you've came across on it?

Stavros Murphy

My idea of the deep web is looking at the free stuff on Adverts. That or straying into one of the Region Forums on Boards. Any more off the beaten path and I'd be afraid I'd never get back. The only onion browsing I like is picking through them on the top of me steak.

hatrickpatrick

Tor is not the only manifestation of the deep web, just the one which has received the most mainstream publicity. There are many other protocols for running underground web applications - i2p is a good example, which apart from allowing anonymous browsing, contains its own built in hidden chat system. Freenet is another.
Serious criminals have probably also created their own protocols which are kept entirely secret and the public knows nothing about. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there was a program which operated like Tor or i2p but with its own separate proprietary protocol, and was only known or available to members of specific organisations. Makes sense web you think about it - publicity is what will kill Tor due to making it an increased target for surveillance, anything which is kept quiet has a better chance of remaining secure.

Artful_Badger

I had a peek once to see what was "down there" it was pretty much like the internet was 10 years ago. Very basic HTML pages with lots of links to lots of odd and dodgy content.

I didnt go snooping too much though.

Smidge

I don't know anything about it tbh but was just thinking having read through this thread.......

If there is so much CP and images on it would agencies not use it to find missing children etc?
Can it not be hacked or traced?

blatantrereg

I use TOR quite often. I've no interest in visiting the deep Web though. TOR is not slow to use. It takes a little time to initialise - less than a minute usually. Once it is running there isn't a noticeable difference in the connection speed though.
I get exposed to enough disturbing crap while browsing the regular Internet. A good example was a highly distressing image on Wikipedia I saw while looking up a chemical that causes birth defects.

syklops

kjl wrote: »

There is a lot of child porn on it, and forums where people trade images and videos.

As opposed to the regular web which is...?

TBH, as another poster says, it sounds cool, "Deep web", but really its more the "slightly-harder-to-get-on-to-than-regular" web.

Its been made famous by a few newspaper articles and of House of Cards, but really, the Deep Web is just a corner of the internet. There are many other corners which are also obscured and are less moderated than say boards. Theres a whole big world out there that isn't indexed by google.