[tor-talk] What is the weirdest/creepiest thing you have found on the dark web?

[Roger Dingledine]

On Sun, Apr 07, 2019 at 09:19:11PM -0400, Seth Caldwell wrote:
> I know the dark web can be a terrible place, with content not suitable for
> anyone, basically. Like illegal drug cartel, fake passports/IDs,creepy
> websites, and generally all around messed up stuff. If you feel comfortable
> talking about your experiences. Then, please reply to this Message.

I'm increasingly realizing that when "threat intelligence" companies
talk about the dark web, they mean anything on the internet that they
think you should be scared of.

For example, I talk to a growing number of CTOs from these threat
intelligence companies, and the recurring pattern is that they explain
that their marketing people need to say "oooo dark web" to feel like
they're being competitive, but actually almost all of their useful
material comes from watching paste sites like pastebin.

So increasingly, when I hear somebody breathlessly asking me about all
the spooky stuff on the internet, I wonder what that has to do with Tor,
that is, why they are asking Tor.

Or taking a step back: when they say dark web, are they talking about
(A) websites on the internet that are reachable via Tor onion services,
(B) websites on the internet that have bad stuff on them, or
(C) websites on the internet that you need to log in to before you can
read the content?

There was a time a while ago where I think people meant 'A', but nowadays
it seems everybody means 'B' or 'C'. There are a wide variety of websites
in Russia (i.e. that end in .ru) or Malaysia (.my) with all of those
things you mentioned plus more. And of course there is some overlap
between the three categories, but I think the overlap is a lot smaller
than people think, and certainly a lot smaller than the "oooo dark web"
hollywood tv shows want to imply.

For my most recent discussions about the dark web, and trying to get
some actual facts around it, see minutes 36-44 of the FOSDEM 2019 video:
https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/tor_project/

Hope this helps,
--Roger