What Really Happens On The Dark Web? Ethical Hacker Shares Insight

Millions of webpages, databases and servers operate around the clock over the vast expanse of the Internet. The “visible" Internet, also known as the surface web or open web, refers to websites that are easily accessed by search engines like Google and Yahoo. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. So the question arises what completes the gigantic iceberg of the Internet? The answer is the Dark Web. Many of us link it to the unsettling areas of the internet where fraudsters and other criminals lurk.

Ryan Montgomery, a renowned ethical hacker and cyber security expert, who has uncovered many internet predators in the past, shared some perspectives on the subject. He explained about the dark web and its activities in detail on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast.

The ethical hacker clarified that the dark web actually isn’t an open black market, marketplace, or anything else that people usually expect it to be.

Upon successfully connecting to the dark web, you still need to know the location of these “horrible websites."

“Once you’re connected to the dark web you still need to know where to go to visit these horrible websites. Imagine a very long string of letters and numbers and the website instead of ‘.com’ it would be ‘.onion’," he said.

As he puts it, you have to view such websites using the Onion Router—which you can download from the TOR website—instead of a standard browser.

Ryan continues by explaining that you next need to visit something called the Hidden Wiki, which would display all the various types of websites along with links to them.

He revealed that there are links to several sorts of websites, all of which are full of “horrible" websites that “do horrible things." “There’s counterfeit money, there’s fake IDs," he said.

The hacker claimed that while he has occasionally been forced to search the dark web for “predators and paedophiles," this is not always the case.

Watch the video here:

According to Ryan, these individuals frequently use their phone number, which can be traced back to them, their normal email address, or an IP address that has been used for several emails. They also sometimes use their face as their profile picture.