Onions can make people cry
Intro
This wiki will cover the most important aspects of Tor: the free and open-source software that enables anyone to communicate anonymously on the internet. The article will contain a little about the deep, dark and surface web, why use Tor and what is for, the history of Tor, a closer look on how Tor actually works and the legal and illegal aspects of the web browser.
The three webs
The World Wide Web (WWW) consists of multiple parts named: deep, dark and surface web.
Surface web
The surface web is the easiest to explain as that is the part of the web that all of us use to browse the internet, even right now as you are reading this wiki you are browsing the surface web. The different areas of the web are defined by if they are indexed and if the user needs to authenticate himself to access the webpage. The surface web mostly consists of web pages that do not need user authentication. The web pages are indexed, meaning that a user can find the pages from using a search engine. The surface web contains about 10-16% of all of the information on the WWW. (9)
Deep web
Everything except the surface makes up the deep web part of the WWW. This means that the dark web is also a part of the deep web. Most of the deep web is inaccessible to normal search engines since the pages are not indexed or they require authentication to access. To access the deep web users need to use a special browser like Tor. Users also need to use the Hidden Wiki to get the urls for the different webpages, so the Hidden Wiki is kind of like a gateway into the deep web. The deep web contains about 84-90% of all of the information on the WWW. (9)
Dark web
And now finally, the dark web. The dark web is a part of the deep web and it’s full size is not actually known. Security experts estimate that there are about 10,000 to 100,000 active sites in the dark web at any given moment. Since the dark web is a part of the deep web it’s pages are not indexed and cannot be found by search engines. The dark web is also the part of the web where most illegal drugs, guns and human trafficking happens, but governments and the UN has also used the dark web to protect political dissidents and hunt down criminals. A great example of this is how the US government tracked down the owner of Silk Road (an underground black market primarily for drugs), Ross Ulbricht in 2013. (9)
Why use Tor
So after all of that why would you use The Onion Router (Tor)? So using Tor is similar to any other web browser, except your real IP address and any other system information is obscured when browsing the web. It also hides the user’s activity from their internet service provider.
The primary uses of Tor are:
- Bypassing censorship and surveillance
- Visiting websites anonymously
- Accessing Tor hidden services (.onion sites)
We will get into more detail about Tor and how it works later on. (9)
