The desk and computer where Falder plotted his crimes. Photo: AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe dark web creates a lot of problems for law enforcement because they can\u2019t track users through the usual computer methods. They have to rely on old-fashioned detective work, trying to identify users through distinctive features in pictures and videos, or through social media.<\/p>\n
The paedophilia scene adds a further layer of complexity because the vast majority of it is not commercial. With the drugs\/weapons\/fraud markets, there is a money (or cryptocurrency) trail to follow. Illegal porn tends to be made and shared among participants for free.<\/p>\n
To get access to the most extreme sites, members have to provide original material depicting child abuse, so obviously law enforcement can\u2019t participate in that. At best, they can hope to take over the account of someone they have busted, but even that can be short-lived as members have to constantly produce new material or be locked out.<\/p>\n
Law enforcement has undertaken some very controversial methods, including running one of the largest paedophile sites in the world for more than a year in order to try to identify as many offenders as possible.<\/p>\n
What is the biggest myth about the dark web? <\/strong><\/p>\nThe biggest myth by far is that it\u2019s 10 times larger than the internet; this gets propagated by tabloid media all the time. It stems from a lot from people using the terms \u201cdeep web\u201d and \u201cdark web\u201d interchangeably when they are different things. The deep web is just everything that you won\u2019t reach using Google or any other search engines, such as the pages behind a pay wall or a password (your banking details, for example). The dark web makes up a tiny fraction of the deep web. A really, really tiny fraction. It\u2019s infinitely smaller than the clear web.<\/p>\n
As for myths of what can be found on the dark web, many people believe there is a further, deeper, darker section of the dark web, called Mariana\u2019s Web or the Shadow Web, containing the greatest horrors. Snuff movies. Gladiator fights to the death. A collection of psychopaths who play demented games of conkers, swinging babies by their ankles to try to crush the skull of their opponent\u2019s child. They\u2019re all just creepy stories.<\/p>\n
The most popular myth of all is \u201cred rooms\u201d, where people \u2013 usually women \u2013 are tortured to death live on camera while those who have paid to watch type in torture commands in a chat box. Think the movie Hostel,<\/em> with webcams. There is some truth to this rumour, but the execution is not like you see in the movies. Most notably, because it involves children, not adults.<\/p>\nHow big a problem is \u201cdoxxing\u201d on the dark web: releasing someone\u2019s personal data (address, phone number, email) to blackmail them? <\/strong><\/p>\nTo be honest, I\u2019ve seen very little of this, in the way you describe it, on the dark web. It\u2019s more common on the clear web. The greatest crime you can commit within a dark web community is the doxxing of somebody. Every illegal market or forum will remove any attempts to dox one of their users and ban the username that posts the information. It is considered the digital equivalent of ratting on someone to law enforcement. On the other hand, those same markets have no problem selling stolen personal information from hackers that will be used for financial gain.<\/p>\n
Many people who use the dark web aren\u2019t criminals. Whistleblowers, journalists and free-speech advocates can depend on it. Does the dark web have its place? <\/strong><\/p>\nIt most certainly does. The dark web is a useful tool for people who need privacy and secrecy: people living under oppressive regimes may use it to share views that oppose their government, or even just to access Facebook. Journalists can use it to safely confer with their sources; humanitarian workers can use it to meet and discuss their work. Whistleblowers can upload documents and data without any chance of it being digitally traced back to them. WikiLeaks is an example of an early adopter of Tor for whistleblowers.<\/p>\n
There are those who believe the dark web is the future of the internet and that this will be a good thing because it will give us our privacy back. Our mobiles and PCs contain our entire life, information that is being heavily mined by everything from Facebook to the banks.<\/p>\n
Most of us somewhat willingly give up our privacy for the convenience of cookies remembering our login details, or how much of a video we watched, or which sporting event we\u2019ve been to recently. Everywhere we go online, we leave a digital footprint: of our browsing history, our purchases, our taste in clothes, our political affiliations, our physical location. We happily hand over detailed personal information to a company in the hope of getting a free latte when we walk past a coffee chain. We\u2019ve given up our privacy for convenience, and that\u2019s not always a good thing.<\/p>\n
Social networks like Facebook and Twitter seem to be particularly vulnerable to hackers and evidence suggests the malware problem \u2013 malicious software that spreads viruses and Trojan horses \u2013 is growing.<\/p>\n
Are you telling us we should be more worried about the clear web than the dark web?<\/strong><\/p>\nMost people should be much more worried about the clear web. Especially with the amount of information we provide to social media both knowingly and unknowingly: we have pretty much entered a post-privacy world, where our online lives are tightly connected to our offline lives, with the result that our information is up for sale.
\n<\/cite><\/p>\nSource: SMH.au<\/a><\/em><\/p>\nArticle first appeared at TSG VICE. Click here to go there!<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The dark web has been described as the internet\u2019s \u201cevil twin\u201d, a haven for drugs, paedophiles and contract killings. But as Melbourne journalist Eileen Ormsby […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[161],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costaricasex.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11996"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costaricasex.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costaricasex.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costaricasex.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costaricasex.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costaricasex.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costaricasex.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costaricasex.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costaricasex.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}