So I understand the general idea of the much broader deep web being stuff that isn’t indexed by search engines but I have a lot of questions about how the “dark web” works:
1. Where is all the data stored? I get that companies would store their own deep web data but would people who want to create a dark web site need to have their own servers to store it?
2. How are you supposed to find things? If this is stuff you have to look for specifically what do people mean when they say “I stumbled upon this really messed up thing on the dark web” etc.
3. How does something like the tor browser allow you to access stuff that isn’t indexed, how does it find it
4. If you use a tor browser could you technically access anything not indexed? Like if you knew what to look up you could access someone’s personal account on a surface website? I feel like the answer to that is no, but if so then, why
These questions definitely make me look questionable but I promise I’m just fascinated by how the dark web can even function
In: Technology
On a normal website like reddit.com, a company has registered the domain name `reddit.com` with a domain registrar who represents the `.com` top-level domain. They then provide DNS information so that someone who types `reddit.com` into their browser gets an IP address that their computer can use.
With the Dark Web, they don’t have traditional Top Level Domains. They have the `.onion` domain. When someone registers a `.onion` website, they get an autogenerated random character ID that is somewhere from 16 to 56 characters long, and that is their website prefix. So you could have `abcdef1234567890.onion` as your domain name. Those TLDs are shared in a peer to peer network rather than having a central authority.
As for browsing it, there is another mesh network for the Tor browser system, wherein layers of encryption happen in multiple hops between you and the destination.
1. Now where is the data stored? Ultimately, on normal servers. Those servers just aren’t listening to normal internet traffic. Imagine like having a warehouse of stolen goods for people you trust to come and buy them — you just don’t let anyone who don’t trust in the door. That includes search engines.
2. You find these things via person to person communication in your communities. Just like you don’t google “Weed dealers near me”, you know a guy who knows a guy.
3. The tor browser is basically a browser that implements the Tor protocol. Your requests bounce through a series of Tor nodes on their way to its destination.
4. No, because there’s also an authentication layer built into Tor system. Imagine it’s like needing someone who’s already in a nightclub to tell the bouncer to let you in too.
> Where is all the data stored? I get that companies would store their own deep web data but would people who want to create a dark web site need to have their own servers to store it?
No different from the common web. Normal servers.
> How are you supposed to find things? If this is stuff you have to look for specifically what do people mean when they say “I stumbled upon this really messed up thing on the dark web” etc.
Usually lists of links. It’s hard to actually stumble on much there. You start on something better known like the hidden wiki (some instances/versions of it are on the clearnet) that has other sources. Overall it’s just full of shady sites, it gets boring quickly if you don’t have a purpose to use those sites.
> How does something like the tor browser allow you to access stuff that isn’t indexed, how does it find it
It doesn’t help. You have to find the addresses via other sources, just like on the clearnet.
> If you use a tor browser could you technically access anything not indexed?
Any browser can access unindexed stuff as long as you know the URL and it’s accessible via URL only. The only difference with the Tor Browser is that it also allows browsing the `.onion` sites that are on the onion network which anonymizes servers and visitors a little bit.
> Like if you knew what to look up you could access someone’s personal account on a surface website?
Nope, if it’s only shown when you’re logged in, that’s it. A browser can’t bypass that.
Do you remember (or know about) how there used to be phonebooks where you could look up people’s numbers based on their name? Imagine that for most people, you could just look up their name and find their number to call them. The “dark phone” would be unlisted phone numbers. Yes, you could technically just dial random phone numbers to try to find somebody whose number is unlisted. However, nothing stops them from not picking up the phone at all or not telling you their identity when they pick up. This is basically all that the dark web is. It’s like unlisted phone numbers.
One added protection that you can use to access the dark web with more privacy is onion routing (TOR is The Onion Router). Imagine you want to send something to somebody, but you don’t want anybody knowing both the sender and recipient. You can put that package in a box and padlock it with a lock only person #1 has the key to. Then you put that in a box that only person #2 has the key to. And so on, until you have 50 boxes each with a padlock that only one person can open. You hand the box to person #50. They use their key and it tells them who person #49 is, so they give the box to person #49 who uses their key to open the box and they see who person #48 is and gives it to them and so on. Each person only knows who they received the box from and who gets it next. So only person #50 knows who you are and only person #1 knows who the recipient is. This is how TOR works. If you go back to the original phone metaphor, this would let you call somebody to leave them a message, but their caller ID wouldn’t know who you are because you’re doing it through a bunch of relays.
– “Where is all the data stored?” Any device connect to the internet, just like normal websites.
– “How are you supposed to find things?” Nothing is inherently different here. You might be see the URL shared with you. A site you visit may link to another site. A directory of manually curated links might exist (this is what Yahoo originally was for the web). A full fledged search engine is possible for the dark web but the main thing undermining that is that many sites may intentionally not really publicize themselves and are just harder to find without somebody telling you about them.
– “If you use a tor browser could you technically access anything not indexed?” The way to access any internet connected device is just randomly (or systematically) guessing IP addresses and there are hackers that do that. TOR doesn’t let you access more than you could access just by guessing IP addresses. Its purpose instead is to allow two people to communicate without revealing each other’s IP addresses. That guarantee* is what enables people to feel more comfortable doing illegal activity on the dark web, but was actually originally developed by the military and has utility to everything from spies to people who are stuck in oppressive regimes.
* TOR is one step in a long chain of things a person needs to do to actually protect their identity.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search/?q=dark+web&type=link&cId=630b9bc7-98a9-4685-89c5-4305880d34eb&iId=5b94fc8c-ac08-45ec-9c7f-51d25fc3e8bf](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search/?q=dark+web&type=link&cId=630b9bc7-98a9-4685-89c5-4305880d34eb&iId=5b94fc8c-ac08-45ec-9c7f-51d25fc3e8bf)
Y’all need to start utilizing search
The dark web is in many ways simpler than people typically make it out to be. It’s basically just the same as the regular Web, except that it doesn’t get searched or indexed by popular search engines. All public-facing sites begin life on the dark web, though typically they do not stay there for long. Most people who run Websites *want* them to be found, and so they take steps right away to make that happen. Even when they don’t take those steps, crawlers sometimes find them anyway.
1) Most dark web sites have their own servers. You could run a dark site entirely in the public cloud if you really wanted to, but the people responsible for hosting and running it would know it was there and could still do all the things that people who run Websites usually do. Many dark web site operators consider that to be an unacceptable risk. They run their own servers, not because the dark web requires it, but because this way they don’t have to trust anyone else to run them.
2) Some dark web sites exist as directories and listings of other dark web sites. This is pretty much the way the Web used to be organized in the days before search engines. You still have to know where these lists are, but you can find that information if you know where to look.
3) While dark web sites usually can’t be found on search engines, they are still connected to the Internet, and therefore they still need an address of some kind. If you know the address, you can get to the site. Tor has its own form of routing connections to these addresses, but there is no way around needing an address.
4) You don’t even need tor to access most things that aren’t indexed, though tor has its own form of addressing that some sites use. However, this isn’t the same as hacking into a non-public system. Whatever authentication and authorization methods a site might implement will still work normally. You can’t just look up someone’s password unless somebody (maybe them, maybe someone else) has actually posted it somewhere.
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