A nibble of information

We all know what the Internet is and how helpful it has been to us all these years. It has become part of our daily life. Access to information through the Internet has almost become a basic human right to every man and child.

Although the Internet has become our accomplice, it has its drawbacks. We read a lot of cases cyber abuse, fraud, plagiarism and unethical hacking related to media found online. It is a source open to anyone and everyone around the world regardless of age or authority which has caused many issues worldwide due to invasion of privacy.

Young children have become addicted to watching and looking at things that are not meant for them and in many cases this habit has caused many problems. But little to people or authorities care about it because it's all part of the business. As always they ignore the ill effects to carry on the process of making money.

We buy, sell connect, share, update, research, spend our leisure, play, argue, learn and do all sorts of things on the Internet. It is a vast, exponential series of links and connections. But all these millions of data we keep using everyday is just the surface of the Internet.

Beyond this innocent face of the Internet, lies another part that is almost invisible to the naked eye.

"By some estimates, it is five hundred times larger than the surface web that most people search everyday." -Popular Science

The 'Dark web', as it is coined is another alien domain that remains hidden from our daily searches and require special software and configurations to access.

The stuff that the Dark Web provides its users is unimaginable. Here is a list of the services dark web provides.

• Drugs

• Counterfeit currency

• Forged papers

• Ammunition, firearms and explosives

• Hit-men/assassins/thugs for hire

• Human organs

• Cryptocurrency

• Bulletproof web-hosing services

• Illegal cloud computing

• Crime-ware

• Hackers for hire

• Multilingual crime call centers

• Illegal pornography

• Scams and phishing

• Botnets

• Unverified content

• Other fraud services

The list is endless. These services are commonly used by all kinds of people from thugs to politicians to even common people who require online help and purchase and sell stuff but want to remain anonymous. Anonymity is the heart of dark web. It is basically an overlay network that uses the Internet but require specific software to operate.

The United Kingdom and many other countries have dedicated an entire cyber-crime unit to tackle the dark web. It is becoming a major problem to various countries and ever surpassing the boundaries of the infamous Wikileaks.

The users of the dark web use TOR a browser that is commonly used to access the dark web due to its certified encryption out of the many other privacy services to mask their identities.

"You may know TOR for its end-to-end user hiding properties. You can use TOR to hide your identity, and spoof your location." -PC Advisor

The dark web has now arisen as a major threat to the world's economy as most of the money is dealt online.

The Internet has never been a secure arena and it will never be. All we have to do is keep our heads up, watch out for scams and not get carried away with things that do not suit us and not mess with the underside of the Internet. But in the end it all comes down to our sense of right and wrong. We need to maintain a decent online identity and keep the interests of the diverse online community at heart and work towards the progress of the Internet as a whole.

If you want to know more about the dark web, check out The Sinister Dark Net by Abdul Adhl Azeez, author of The School Detective Gang

This article was written by Amrutha Thiagarajah