Dark web

daemon and utilities for an anonymizing network

The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on darknets that use the Internet, but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communicate and conduct business anonymously without divulging identifying information, such as a user's location. The dark web forms a small part of the deep web, the part of the web not indexed by web search engines, although sometimes the term deep web is mistakenly used to refer specifically to the dark web.

online black market operated as a Tor hidden service

thumb|Surface web in relation to deep web and dark web

.onion is a special-use top-level domain name designating an anonymous onion service, which was formerly known as a "hidden service", reachable via the Tor network. Such addresses are not actual DNS names, and the .onion TLD is not in the Internet DNS root, but with the appropriate proxy software installed, Internet programs such as web browsers can access sites with .onion addresses by sending the request through the Tor network.

The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is an anonymous network layer (implemented as a mix network) that allows for censorship-resistant, peer-to-peer communication. Anonymous connections are achieved by encrypting the user's traffic (by using end-to-end encryption), and sending it through a volunteer-run network of roughly 55,000 computers distributed around the world. Given the high number of possible paths the traffic can transit, a third party watching a full connection is unlikely. The software that implements this layer is called an "I2P router", and a computer running I2P is called an "I2

2018 film directed by Stephen Susco

American founder and administrator of the illicit online marketplace the Silk Road

website intended to offend and/or disgust its viewers

censorship-resistant wiki

websites and pages easily accessible to user agents

KickassTorrents (commonly abbreviated KAT) was a website that provided a directory for torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. It was founded in 2008 and by November 2014, KAT became the most visited BitTorrent directory in the world, overtaking The Pirate Bay, according to the site's Alexa ranking. KAT went offline on 20 July 2016 when the domain was seized by the U.S. government. The site's proxy servers were shut down by its staff at the same time.

EncroChat was a Europe-based communications network and service provider that offered modified smartphones allowing encrypted communication among subscribers. It was used primarily by organised crime members to plan criminal activities.

Australian criminal, rapist and torturer

American neo-Nazi and white supremacist news and commentary website

2015 film by Alex Winter

Hurtcore, a portmanteau of the words "hardcore" and "hurt", is a name given to a particularly extreme form of child sexual assault material, usually involving degrading violence, bodily harm, and torture, typically relating to child sexual abuse. Eileen Ormsby, Australian writer and author of The Darkest Web, described hurtcore as "a fetish for people who get aroused by the infliction of pain, or even torture, on another person who is not a willing participant". An additional motivation for the perpetrator, next to their position of power over their victims, can be the reaction of their victim

publicly accessible part of the Internet

Tor2web (pronounced "Tor to Web") is a software project to allow Tor hidden services to be accessed from a standard browser without being connected to the Tor network. It was created by Aaron Swartz and Virgil Griffith.

Rawti Shax or Didi Nwe

Ahmia is a clearnet search engine for Tor's onion services created by Juha Nurmi in 2014. Ahmia is accessible through both its clearweb website and its onion service version. It is one of the primary tools used by Tor users to discover and access onion websites.

thumb|Lock screen when opening the page|alt=Refer to caption thumb|An infographic of how DeepDotWeb conducted its affiliate marketing operation by referring users to darknet marketplaces according to the United States Department of Justice|alt=Refer to caption

2023 drama film by Pascal Plante

Wikimedia disambiguation page

Kidflix was a dark web site that hosted child pornography from 2021 to 2025. Before it was closed Kidflix was one of the largest pedophile platforms in the world, with approximately 1.8 million users worldwide logged on Kidflix between April 2022 and March 2025. Over its lifetime the site held more than 91,000 videos, averaging 3.5 uploaded every hour.

international police operation targeting darknet markets operators such as Silk Road

online trafficking of credit card, bank account or other personal information

commercial sexual exploitation of children in South Korea

2007 murder case in Aichi Prefecture, Japan

crime that is committed while streaming video live

SIGAINT was a Tor hidden service offering secure email services. According to its FAQ page, its web interface used SquirrelMail which does not rely on JavaScript. Passwords couldn't be recovered. Users received two addresses per inbox: one at sigaint.org for receiving clearnet emails and the other at its .onion address only for receiving emails sent from other Tor-enabled email services. Free accounts had 50 MB of storage space and expired after one year of inactivity. Upgraded accounts had access to POP3, IMAP, SMTP, larger size limits, full disk encryption, and never expired.