For most of us, the dark web is pretty much an unknown – something we’re more used to hearing about in films and series rather than actually diving into ourselves.
And there’s a whole lot hidden away on there, from total criminal activity to the likes of ‘gnoming services’.
But an ‘ethical hacker’ has explained why it’s not quite possible to access the dark web in the way you may expect.
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Ryan Montgomery is a professional cyber security specialist and ethical hacker known for exposing online predators.
He appeared on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast to explain the dark web.
The American cleared up that it ‘isn’t a marketplace’ or ‘the black market’ like you might be thinking.
Montgomery explained: “Once you’re connected to the dark web, Tor, the Onion Router [a software that enables anonymous communication], you still need to know where to go to visit these horrible websites.”
The expert shed light on how the dark web can be used to find the online activities of predators.
He continued to outline just how the hidden sites work.
“Imagine a very long string of letters and numbers and the website, instead of dot com, it’d be dot onion," he said.
“You can’t visit those websites in a regular browser, you have to do that while you’re connected to the Onion Router which you can download at the T-O-R’s website.
“And then you could go to a thing called the Hidden Wiki, and the Hidden Wiki will show you all different categories of the websites with the link to them.”
Montgomery said there are ‘marketplaces’ listed, as well as generally ‘horrible things on there’.
The ethical hacker says there’s even ‘murder for hire’ available, as well as links for kids.
“There’s counterfeit money, there’s fake IDs,” he added. “There all kinds of different websites that do horrible things.”
In the comments to a clip of the interview shared on TikTok, one user wrote: “I wouldn’t go on it [the dark web] unless you want to be traumatised or hacked. Don’t understand why so many people go on there tbh.”
Others joked: “When I was younger I thought all you had to do was search ‘dark web’ to get onto the website.”
Some were confused as to why Montgomery was ‘instructing everyone’ as to how to access the dark web while he outlined the dangers.
Many added it sounds ‘traumatic’ and they simply ‘don’t wanna know’.
Stay safe lads.
Topics: Technology, TikTok
Jess Battison