Acess The Dark Web

If you have your GPS or location services enabled, turn it off. Research the sites you plan to make purchases through ahead of time. Instead of using your actual email address, sign up for a different one dark market link you can use solely for your dark web activity. You can even get an encrypted email address — for example, through ProtonMail. ExpressVPN has also developed its unique security protocol called Lightway.

Whether that’s in darkness or daylight is very much up to you. But before we go any further into sorting fact from fiction about this most controversial of online topics, perhaps it’s best we first delve into exactly what the dark web actually is. Our free web proxy will give you one tab’s worth of secure browsing.

How to Choose a VPN for Accessing the Dark Web

Those hard-to-access websites are collectively known as the Dark web. First of all, you’ll need a VPN – now you know – it provides additional privacy and security online by changing your IP address. We selected a random country to connect through it, and the VPN shows we are in. These routes do the biggest job to darknet websites keep you safe on your surfs – they enable the transmission of traffic over encrypted layers to ensure your anonymity on the network. And this is definitely what we all want when we surf on the deep – Anonymity. You have to proceed safely because the curiosity might lead you to want to access the Darknet, too.

This process slows down your browsing speeds, but ExpressVPN’s Lightway let me browse Tor without any noticeable slowdowns. I got an average speed of 46 Mbps against a base speed of 50 Mbps with just a 8% drop. If you’re browsing from a network that blocks Tor, choose “Configure”. When you click “Configure”, it will ask you if Tor is censored in your location, or if you’re using a Proxy — then it will help you configure a pluggable transport. If not, you can select “Connect” to begin browsing the dark web immediately. My top recommendation is ExpressVPN — its military-grade encryption and strict no-logs policy mean your online activity is always private.

But if you connect to the VPN before connecting to Tor and an IP leak occurs, only the VPN’s IP address will be exposed. Start using .onion links to surf your favorite sites on the dark web. It’s free to download and the installation process is simple — just follow the on-screen instructions.

The problem occurs when people aren’t incentivized to operate nodes, which can result in a slow and unreliable network. The Bitcoin network, for example, does give incentive to miners to maintain the network, but individual nodes still aren’t getting any rewards and this can cause problems. Unlike the “normal” web, almost every other website on the Darknet has the “Bitcoin accepted” sign displayed on it.

Should you use a free VPN?

Due to its anonymity and the presence of illegal content in some parts of the dark web, this portion of the internet has a negative reputation. Many view it as a place for socially unacceptable behavior, such as the sale of illegal drugs, coordination of terrorist actions, and the sale of illegal or questionable pornography. One could also hunt down facts about cats, for example, just like on the regular internet. The primary difference between the dark web and the rest of the internet is in the level of true anonymity. A common query among online users is how to access the dark web. We’ve already covered how you access the dark web using a computer.

VPN services, on the other hand, provides users with networks of privately-run secure servers operating under strict guidelines and standards. Last but not least – DuckDuckGo – the go-to search engine when you are on the Tor network. DuckDuckGo does not track its users and serves non-personalized search results. Based on the company’s study, approximately 60 million people use DuckDuckGo to search online . The most basic email services on the Dark Web share similarities to Gmail or Yahoo Mail. Yet you will also find many niche email services here that allow users to stay anonymous.

• The dark web is known as a place where illegal goods and services can be bought and sold, and for that reason, it’s earned a reputation for being a little seedy and salacious.
• You can go to the dark web for nothing more than a simple torrent tracker.
• While the deep web is chiefly used for legitimate day-to-day online activities, the dark web is mainly anonymous and known as a haven for conducting illegal transactions.
• The dark web is a segment of the larger deep web and similarly refers to anything on the internet that is not indexed by and, therefore, accessible via a search engine like Google.
• Every communication you have to do in the dark web is encrypted, so simple transactions also need a PGP key.

These are websites that—for reasons both legal and illegal—exist in a world that’s intentionally hard to find. Most people get confused between the Deep Web and the Darknet . The Deep Web refers to all parts of the Internet which search engines can’t find. This can be anything from secure academic archives, library databases, members only websites and all the way up to the Darknet which I’ll talk about shortly. Unlike content on the surface web, they require special programs or technologies to access, and these will often hide the visitors’ IP addresses from the website as well. Accessing them without these special tools is impossible.

Browser For Dark Web

If you can find a page with a standard search engine and visit it with a standard web browser , it is part of the Surface web. You can access the Dark web safely, but just diving in blindly is a bad idea. This is like going spelunking without the proper equipment — you’re likely to get hurt, possibly very badly. We’re going to get you oriented for this journey as fast as possible, then give you the tools you need to get down to the Dark web and look around for yourself.

The dark web contains a wide variety of services and content to its users, some of which skirts or disregards legality. While the intention and purpose of users on the dark web may vary, the dark web itself is neither good nor bad. The dark web is also unregulated, meaning that it is run and upheld by a vast network of individuals around the world. This network contains thousands of volunteers who operate proxy servers to route dark web requests. As such, no one is responsible for setting rules or ensuring their adherence. This operating model is what makes the dark web such a valuable and appealing tool for cybercriminals and other people with questionable intentions.

These include white papers, government data, original reporting, and interviews with industry experts. We also reference original research from other reputable publishers where appropriate. You can learn more about the standards dark web marketplaces we follow in producing accurate, unbiased content in oureditorial policy. As you surf, you’ll probably notice that dark website addresses end with the .onion extension rather than the traditional .com, .org, .edu, etc.

The risk of being a visitor to this content could lead to being placed on a watchlist or immediate targeting for a jail sentence. Think of Tor as a web browser like Google Chrome or Firefox. That groundwork was the basis for the Tor Project, which was released in 2002 and launched a browser in 2008.

You can’t just type “silk road” into Google and expect to see a dark website. People often confuse the dark web with cryptocurrencies, which are often used to make purchases there. The dark web makes it easier to set up and access websites that offer a high degree of anonymity for everyone involved. Also called the darknet, the dark web is much like the broader web was in its early days during the late 20th century.