From time to time it jumps to the honor of the chronicles but almost nobody knows exactly what it corresponds to. Let's discover the dark web, the dark part of the Net
You might have heard its name during one of the many password thefts (Yahoo! LinkedIn, Tumblr and Dropbox, just to name a few) in recent times: if you wanted to have access to archives for information purposes, you had to look towards the dark web.
Or maybe you have heard this name during some terrorist attack, cited as an "alternative market" where the attackers were able to find weapons and explosives. Or, again, as a center for the sale of drugs and narcotics of all kinds. Whatever the occasion, however, the dark web has never made a good impression: in the eyes of public opinion, the "dark part" of the Net is comparable to a sort of place of perdition tied in a double thread with criminality and illegality. A conviction that is only partially true, and that does not do honor to the complexity of this structure.
What is the dark web
If every time you hear the name, maybe on the news or in the words of an acquaintance of yours, you wonder what is the dark web, you know that the answer is already in the name. The "dark part" of the web is composed of portals that, generally, allow users to remain anonymous and that require special software to access them. Moreover, the portals of the dark web will be accessible only if you know their URL: they are not indexed by any search engine and are not, therefore, traceable by Google, Yahoo! or Bing. Esattamente come il web “normale”, il dark web è un luogo (virtuale) molto eterogeneo (si possono trovare sia portali legati ad attività border line o completamente illegali) e accumunato dalla garanzia dell’anonimato. Insomma, un web un po’ più oscuro: come dicevano gli antichi romani nomen omen.
Fonte foto: Wikimedia
Navigando nel dark web
Bisogna, però, notare una cosa: dark web e deep web sono due cose assolutamente diverse. Anche se può capitare di confondersi, si tratta di due entità parallele: mentre il dark web è una struttura che “vive di vita propria” al di fuori della ragnatela di portali che navighiamo quotidianamente, il deep web ne è parte integrante. Si tratta, infatti, di tutti quei servizi e tutti quei portali “alla luce del sole” che, però, non sono indicizzati dai motori di ricerca: si pensi, ad esempio, alla propria casella di posta elettronica o a contenuti a pagamento dei portali di informazione o streaming video.
Come si accede al dark web
Fonte foto: Tor Project
Schermata di Tor Browser, porta d’accesso per il dark web
A seconda della “zona” del dark web cui si vuole accedere, sarà necessario utilizzare diversi software o servizi. Il più conosciuto è senza ombra di dubbio la rete Tor (acronimo di The Onion Router), servizio di anonimizzazione cui si accede grazie al software Tor browser. Si tratta, in realtà, di una versione modificata di Firefox e pensata per garantire l’anonimato e la protezione dei dati personali di chi lo utilizza. Thanks to this "special" browser you will be able to access the dark web and start visiting portals and ecommerce sites.
What you can find in the dark web
As specified in the introduction, many of the activities that take place in the dark web are not legal. This does not mean, however, that they are necessarily evil. Wandering from portal to portal, for example, it will be possible to buy weapons, false documents and drugs of all kinds, but that's not all. The dark web is also the place for the exchange of confidential documents between journalists and their sources (the so-called whistleblowing). The guarantee of anonymity, in fact, allows even particularly exposed people to get in touch with reporters and investigative journalists, providing them with tips and primary sources on which to build their reports.