Engaging Introductions: Capturing Your Audience’s Interest
The dark web refers to websites that are not on the regular internet but are instead hidden in a private network that is only accessible using specialized web browsers, such as the Tor Browser.
The Tor Browser is an open-source web browser created for anonymous browsing and to evade censorship. It routes users’ traffic through thousands of volunteer-run servers called nodes/relays. These nodes/relays and the websites operating on them make up the Tor network, or as it is more generally named, the dark web.
Dark Web
These sites are only accessible over the Tor network and are commonly used for privacy and anonymity. The Tor Browser also features many built-in protections that protect against tracking and fingerprinting.
While the Tor network was not created for illegal activities, as it’s harder to trace websites to their physical location, cybercriminals have also adopted it to host their websites.
For example, ransomware gangs use the dark web to leak stolen data and extort victims, and dark web marketplaces sell illegal items, such as drugs, weapons, stolen credit cards, stolen credentials, and malware.
However, not all sites running on the Dark Web are malicious. For example, legitimate sites, such as the BBC, the New York Times, ProPublica, and Facebook, have made their sites accessible as a Tor Onion URL to help people avoid government censorship.
This guide will teach you how to install the Tor Browser in Windows easily so you can access the Dark Web or browse the web anonymously. The same general process applies to other operating systems, as Tor is also available for Mac and Linux.
How to Install Tor
To gain access to the Dark Web, you must first install the Tor Browser. You can find the installer on their website: torproject.org.
Upon opening the Tor website, you will be presented with various download options for the operating systems that Tor supports, including Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android.
How to access your first Dark Web or Onion Site
When the Tor Browser is launched, you will be brought to a purple homepage with a search field for the DuckDuckGo search engine in the center of the screen. This search field allows you to perform regular, but now anonymized, web searches through DuckDuckGo’s Tor site.
The search results from DuckDuckGo will be for websites on the regular web, which you still visit through Tor. For dark websites, you need to enter the specific Onion URL you wish to visit into the browser’s address bar.
These URLs are usually very long, consisting of a random jumble of letters and numbers. Though you likely won’t remember the addresses of onion websites, you can find these URLs on various websites on the internet.
