Technical vulnerabilities prevent full-proof anonymity when browsing the dark web

The dark web can expose anonymous users to potentially dangerous environments

Browsing the dark web requires onion routing, which prevents visitors from being identified and the locations from which they connect from being traced. This has been useful to activists in environments affected by political oppression or instability. However, those unfamiliar with navigating the space may encounter malware and network attacks from denizen hackers.

A US Department of Defense research lab developed the technology for the dark web

Although encryption existed to mask the content of communications across the internet before the 1990s, those managing overseas network infrastructure could determine a spy's affiliation based on where they saw data sent to and received from. To keep this information secret, the US Naval Research Laboratory developed onion routing, which enabled anonymized web browsing. The release of the technology to the public obscured sensitive communications further by growing the volume of anonymous data.

A 2020 study suggests just 6.7% of Tor network users visit sites on the dark web

It did not distinguish between visits to malicious sites and traffic to legitimate institutions with .onion domains, such as the BBC or Buzzfeed, and thus claimed that 6.7% of anonymized users engage in nefarious activity. The low percentage still highlights that most users of the technology underlying the dark web do not use it to browse the hidden portion of the internet.

Explore metrics on the Tor network, the infrastructure of the dark web

While internet traffic within the network is concealed, public, nonsensitive data can be used to estimate the number of active users, the number of relay servers, network performance speed and reliability, etc. Researchers can use this data to indirectly identify political upheavals or censorship campaigns worldwide, such as the Arab Spring.

The dark web cannot be stumbled upon by accident

Many pages on the dark web are not publicly broadcast and are available only to relevant parties on a need-to-know basis. Although some online directories list the URLs for these webpages, connecting to them still requires specialized software, as these pages block connections from traditional web browsers such as Chrome.

Accessing the dark web is legal in the US, the EU, and most countries worldwide

As long as users do not pay for illegal goods or services or acquire illegal content, they cannot be prosecuted. Those on the dark web include academics, researchers, and cybersecurity experts gathering threat intelligence on cybercriminals, cyberterrorists, and state actors, as well as protesters, activists, and grassroots organizers.

The dark web protects free speech from censorship and authoritarian oversight

Encrypted networks allow users with internet access anywhere in the world to view blocked content and avoid surveillance when communicating evidence of abuse to independent journalists. The same networks can support democracies by helping activists coordinate protests on dark web forums.

Credit monitoring services may oversell the benefits of dark web monitoring

Currently, technology exists to scrape and download data from webpages, which can then be analyzed to identify a user's information. However, scrapers cannot access or remove personal data from dark websites because they are often protected by paywalls, rendering monitoring ineffective beyond reporting publicly available data breaches.

Watch an ethical hacker provide a tour of the dark web

Cybersecurity researcher John Hammond explores the effectiveness of a dark web search engine, leaks from ransomware group data breaches, and a categorized index of dark web links, including some that are alleged to host malware. Many dark web sites are no longer active or host scams to fool unsuspecting visitors.

Instead of .com or similar, web addresses on the dark web end in 'd.onion'

Since the latest version of the onion routing protocol, dark web domain names consist of a random set of 56 alphanumeric characters followed by .onion (e.g., propublica.org → p53lf57qovyuvwsc6xnrppyply3vtqm7l6pcobkmyqsiofyeznfu5uqd.onion). The last character is always "d" due to the encryption algorithm's requirements.

Onion routing disguises internet traffic in layers resembling a nesting doll

Data is encrypted at least three times before being sent to a node—a server that can only decrypt one layer. Then, the underlying encrypted data is relayed to another node, and the process repeats until all layers are decrypted. Thousands of possible nodes make it extremely difficult to trace activity within the system.

As of 2025, an estimated $3.2B in annual revenue flows through dark web platforms

The untraceable cryptocurrency Monero is used in about 60% of transactions across more than 37 active marketplaces that sell copyrighted materials, private information, and phishing kits—tools that help bad actors more easily create fake sites to steal users' data—for financial fraud.

Minor technology failures can spiral into massive internet outages

A mix of centralized cloud infrastructure and legacy protocols leaves the internet susceptible to downtime from minor cyberattacks or software bugs, infrastructure damage caused by extreme weather, and human error if a DNS service provider—the internet's phone book—or a backend system, such as Amazon Web Services, were compromised.

Visualizing the consequence of data breaches

To get a sense of the grim state of data security today, take a look at this infographic from TruthFinder that explains why 2018 was the year of the data breach tsunami.

How end-to-end encryption protects messages, even from service providers

Using symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, data is encrypted on the sender's device before being transmitted across application servers that lack the key needed to decrypt it. The message is not decrypted until it reaches the recipient's device, which uses their private key to recover the plaintext. E2EE's effectiveness has led to its adoption by WhatsApp and Signal.

Explaining how open source systems like Linux can be secure, despite their public source code

While no computer system is immune to all cyberattacks and malware, the transparency of open-source technology means many thousands of developers can review and oversee the underlying code powering the software on an ongoing basis. This increases the likelihood of catching and patching vulnerabilities more quickly than smaller groups of cybercriminals looking to exploit them.

Lack of regulation makes cryptocurrency a hotbed for money laundering

Cryptocurrency is largely anonymous and widely unregulated worldwide. As a result, crypto-to-cash schemes have become a highly prevalent money laundering tactic that allows criminals to commit financial crimes with crypto accounts and then "clean" the money by selling crypto for cash.

The mathematics of quantum-based cryptography, and why existing data is already at risk

Seeing the potential of this technology, some governments and malicious actors are thought to have already started storing encrypted data, in the hopes that quantum computers within the next 10 to 20 years will be able to decrypt it. As of 2022, the National Institute of Standards and Technology had selected four algorithms for inclusion in a quantum-resistant encryption standard.

Ads follow you around the internet through cookies

A technology called “cookies” enables advertisers to essentially team up and follow your behavior around on the internet. This video explains why it seems like ads seem to follow you as you go from website to website—as well as data privacy advocates’ war against cookies.

Future self-driving cars may communicate across a closed wireless infrastructure

Current autonomous vehicles collect and analyze their own data through their own hardware and proprietary software. Connecting data from all such cars on a single network will require overcoming challenges related to standardization and security.

How hash functions encrypt stored passwords and can be enhanced with 'salt'

Hash functions convert text into unique, random sets of characters, a process that is computationally expensive and time-consuming to undo. Because hashed outputs for many common passwords are publicly listed, some sites use a salt—additional characters appended to a password—before hashing to produce an output that is not known. When entering a password, it is salted and hashed, then checked against the database for a matching hash before permitting login.

Deepfake pornography poses significant challenges in combating sexual abuse

In 2017, 96% of deepfake videos involved image-based sexual abuse, which has disproportionately targeted minority women, LGBTQ individuals, adolescents and celebrities. Cultural norms, misogyny and AI advancements have contributed to the proliferation of explicit deepfake content.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

How uploading your consumer genetic testing could lead to a distant relative's arrest

This podcast includes a discussion about how law enforcement can compare DNA samples from a crime scene against voluntarily uploaded DNA on consumer genealogy databases to close cases. Investigators can and have cross-referenced a suspect's crime scene DNA with that of a suspect's relatives who happened to have chosen to upload their genetic information to an open-source genealogy database.

Variations in the energy of light force the use of multiple telescopes

Just as Earth's atmosphere allows the sun's visible light to pass through while blocking other harmful radiation, telescope mirrors and other optics can only reflect, absorb, or transmit certain types of light. Detectors also utilize semiconducting materials that react to specific energies of light, thereby preventing a one-telescope-fits-all solution.

Trick an LLM into revealing sensitive information

Even with robust training, large language models may be fooled into providing sensitive information if correctly prompted. In this game, a wizard withholds eight passwords, which you must prompt them to reveal with ever-increasing LLM safeguards.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Hookworm infection, though risky, may help fight certain autoimmune conditions by tamping down the immune system's inflammatory response.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Lesser-known phobias include turophobia, or the fear of cheese, and nomophobia, the fear of being without your cell phone.

An investigation suggests a Scottish island became awash in forever chemicals via seafoam and seaspray—raising questions about what that means for the safety of other coastal areas.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

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The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Pure water does not conduct electricity because this flow of energy requires the movement of charged particles, and water is a neutral molecule.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Recent research found that the brain doesn't seem to massively rewire following amputation—upending earlier beliefs about the cause of phantom limb pain.

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