The Ultimate Dark Web Guide For Noobs

What is the Dark Web? Why does it exist? And more importantly, how can you access it legally? If you're asking yourself any of these questions, The Ultimate Dark Web Guide For Noobs is for you!

If you already have some prior knowledge of the Dark Web and would prefer a more in-depth guide, click here. The Dark Web in one sentence is a hidden version of the internet. If you’re accessing this guide on mobile, you can click here for a step by step guide to getting to the Dark Web. It's not as hard as you think!

Isn't The Dark Web Illegal?

The dark web itself is NOT ILLEGAL to view. Many people believe that because you CAN perform illegal acts on the dark web, that even accessing it is illegal. This is not true, and you can even browse drug markets without any negative consequences. As long as you don't purchase anything on these markets, you're safe.

What is TOR (The Onion Router)?

Tor provides anonymity through a system of layers. The first layer takes your IP and throws it through 3 Tor relays at random. Each relay only knows the caller and the next relay. This way, only the entry relay knows who you are. And only the exit relay knows who you're trying to contact. The connections between relays are all encrypted and represented by the red arrows in this image. The green arrow is not encrypted and only sent to the web owner. Even though there is no encryption between the last relay and the web owner, he still has no idea who you truly are. He can only see the information you provide him with. Things such as your username, profile picture, or anything you've posted to his site become visible to him.

Benefits of The Dark Web

If you've made it this far, you're probably wondering what the benefits of visiting the Dark Web are. Why do people even download TOR? With TOR, you are anonymous. meaning you can do anything you want online (with a few exceptions). You unlock a whole new part of the internet. A place 20 times the size of the surface web. The surface web only accounts for about 5% of all web pages created on the internet. The rest are found on a different level of the internet. There are 5 levels of the web, and this image (Found on imgur) does a great job of describing each level.