The best way to avoid these risks is to avoid browsing the dark web at random — only visit official onion websites via URLs you’ve acquired through a trusted source. The two main risks of accessing the dark web are engaging with illegal material and being exposed to malware. To get started surfing the dark web, pull up your list of .onion sites to visit and paste them into the navigation bar, one at a time.
Dark web websites: How to access them safely
Adamant offers blockchain-based secure messaging without needing phone numbers or email addresses. The platform stood out during my testing for its commitment to anonymity — all messages are fully encrypted and stored on a decentralized network. It’s particularly useful for sensitive communications that need to remain private. Deutsche Welle (DW) is a German state funded news organization that reports on worldwide topics and events. In order to avoid censorship of their content, they’ve created a .onion site to ensure it’s accessible for all.
How to use Tor with a VPN (Tor-over-VPN)
Sci-Hub gives access to millions of scientific papers, mostly ones from behind paywalls. However, due to copyright infringement, Sci-Hub is considered illegal and banned in many countries. Founded around 1999 by activists in Seattle, it has since grown to over six million users worldwide. It publishes a newsletter in multiple languages and not only runs onion services for its website but all its email and chat services. Facebook is aware of attempts by many governments to restrict access to a tool that allows strangers across the web to talk and collaborate freely.
Never Share Personal Information
You can use DuckDuckGo on the dark web if you’re looking for a search engine that works like Google. However, if you want unfiltered and uncensored search results you can try Torch. Torch is the oldest dark web search engine and it has no restrictions when it comes to search engine results. It might get you better results, depending on what you’re searching for.
Verified social channels and news sites
Some hackers offer ransomware as a service (RaaS), where cybercriminals can “rent” a strain of ransomware from its creator in exchange for a fee or a percentage of their ransom payments. Others sell software exploits that other cybercriminals can use to infect victims with malware and steal personal data. The standard dark web browser is Tor Browser, which directs your browser traffic through the Tor network so you can reach the darknet. As your traffic passes through Tor, it’s encrypted and bounced between at least three relay points, known as nodes.
Best Remote Administration Tools (RAT Tools) – 2026
With rising online privacy concerns in the current digital age, the Tor network’s anonymity is becoming essential. It is a good way to prevent third parties from tracking online activities. People in countries with heavy internet censorship must get a VPN or Tor browser to access the surface web. Dark web search engines work differently to surface web varieties, like Google. The dark web cannot rely solely on crawling in the same way the surface web is — indexes are sometimes added to dark web search engines manually by the site operator, too.
- Once you feel ready and comfortable navigating this hidden part of the internet, you can take the next step and use our dark web search engine at the homepage to explore even more sites.
- They know how to process the information and get it to the correct law enforcement agencies internationally.
- Clarke’s software laid the foundation for The Onion Router or the Tor Project, which the U.S.
- Keybase is an exciting identity service that aims to make it easy for you to link the presence of your online identities together in a cryptographic way.
- DuckDuckGo’s dark web version offers the same privacy-focused search experience as its clear web counterpart.
- For this reason, anybody who wants to privately stream in HD, play games, torrent, make video calls—or do anything else that requires fast speeds—is advised to use a VPN instead.
Dark web monitoring and identity theft protection at your fingertips
The Tor Project created ExoneraTor to let users check whether a specific IP address served as a Tor relay on a given date. Server operators, law enforcement, and academic researchers most commonly use ExoneraTor to identify potential malicious activity on the Tor network. Protonmail offers one of the highest levels of security and privacy for email services, utilizing End-to-End Encryption (E2EE), and operates under Swiss Privacy law. The NYT mirror ensures that its journalism remains accessible in countries where censorship is applied to independent media.
Darknet – Hacking Tools, Hacker News & Cyber Security
Bear in mind too, that your internet provider will be able to see you connecting to Tor nodes, even if it doesn’t know exactly what you’re doing. Many people install a VPN as well, but then you’re putting your trust in an additional third party to not track your activities or report them to anyone else. Tor is like the public-facing door to the dark web, and there are even mobile apps for Android and iOS.
Accessing .Onion sites on Android
- You can choose the best darknet (.onion) website that suits you and start surfing.
- Tor can be used together with a VPN to provide overlapping layers of privacy and anonymity.
- Other dark web search engines include Not Evil, Torch, Haystack, and Ahmia.
- It’s simply a part of the internet that isn’t indexed by regular search engines and needs special software, like Tor, to access.
- Your internet provider usually sees your online activity, but when you connect to a VPN first, they won’t know you’re using Tor.It’s important to use a VPN you can trust.
Find our round-up of the 20 best dark web websites, alongside the specific .onion links you need to start browsing on Tor. We’ll also look more closely at the dark web, what it is, and how it works so you can stay safe when exploring the unknown. Security researchers and dark web analysts usually keep an eye on forums like Dread and other smaller online groups. Users often post and discuss new links here first, especially for marketplaces or services, giving early access to information, though this approach carries the highest risk.
TorLinks
The dark web has all sorts of sites, just like the regular internet, but a lot of them focus on keeping you private and secure. Deep Web Radio is a dark web–based streaming platform that plays a wide range of music genres around the clock. It allows users to listen anonymously, making it a unique entertainment option within the privacy-focused dark web environment. Tor Metrics is the Tor Project’s official source for statistics and information regarding the use of the Tor network. It provides public access to the number of users and trends in usage broken down by geographic location, as well as the number of individual relays that are operational.
During my testing, I found its categorized index particularly helpful for discovering trustworthy sites across various topics. Most internet users love a question and answer forum like Reddit or Quora, on the surface web. The dark web version is Hidden Answers, where users can discuss a wide range of topics anonymously. Just bypass your standard web browsers and fire up your tor browser to get on the dark web to access one of the best tor sites. SecureDrop is a really awesome Tor service that can be used to share information without revealing your identity.
The dark web is a small subset that requires special software like Tor to access. Dark web search engines only index .onion sites on the Tor network. Onion sites, or dark web websites, are sites on the dark web that can typically only be accessed using special software like the Tor browser. These sites use “.onion” domains, which are made up of random letters and numbers up to 56 characters long. Dark web websites won’t show up on Google, but they are indexed by dark web search engines such as Torch.
News, media, and other information organizations
As such, we do not recommend using Tor if you want to do data-intensive activities like streaming in HD, gaming, torrenting, or making video calls. Just like Google, the dark web has some search engines present on it. Though they have their limitations, most of the time you’ll see irrelevant or spammy links for your search results. The biggest and most frustrating part about dark websites is that they live for a short span of time. These platforms keep changing their addresses to avoid DDoS attacks or law enforcement agencies.
The provider also offers a dedicated CyberSec suite that prevents annoying ads and blocks malware and trackers. Also, use an effective antivirus program to check threats if you decide to download files. You can check out this guide on the best antivirus software applications today. If you are in a position to report the incident safely, you should report it to the authorities immediately. It’s recommended not to be too vigilant here and leave the investigation to the professionals. Tor anonymity comes with a cost since malicious hackers and criminals like to operate in the shadows.
Connecting to VPN before Tor (VPN → Tor) hides your Tor usage from your ISP but requires trusting your VPN provider. Security vulnerabilities get discovered regularly, and updates patch them quickly. Running outdated software on the dark web creates unnecessary risk. ZeroBin encrypts any text pasted into it, and its own servers don’t even know what you pasted. You’ll be able to share anything from private messages to passwords across the dark web. This space for private free speech also carries the risk of exposing you to harmful content.
- However, this feature is only available on iOS, Android, and Windows.
- Bear in mind too, that your internet provider will be able to see you connecting to Tor nodes, even if it doesn’t know exactly what you’re doing.
- Not to mention that anonymity safeguards won’t protect you from other threats like hacking and malware.
- Although some search results may be duplicated or no longer active, it remains a practical option for locating working .onion links while keeping your identity protected.
- In addition, it is worth noting that users should not blindly trust links on the Hidden Wiki because this is a community resource that anybody can update, and some of the links are malicious.
- Facebook’s onion version lets people access Facebook in countries where access to the social network is otherwise restricted.
Hackers Using Teams to Deliver Malicious Content Posing as Microsoft Services
The BBC remains one of the most visited news platforms worldwide, with over 438 million users each week accessing its content across various channels. TorLinks serves as a backup or secondary directory site to the popular Hidden Wiki. It’s divided into commercial links (from crypto services to gambling sites) and non-commercial links (like social media).
DuckDuckGo’s onion service works well for privacy-conscious searches across both surface and dark web. Understanding what dark web search engines can’t do is crucial for security teams. Just Onion is a curated directory of .onion sites organized by category. Rather than crawling the entire dark web, it maintains a vetted list of working links sorted into topics like forums, marketplaces, and services. Standard search engines like Google index the surface web by following links and crawling pages.
These assets are often used as initial entry points for ransomware operations. Once users suspect a platform is compromised or dishonest, activity drops quickly and the marketplace either migrates, rebrands, or disappears entirely. Many marketplaces shut down suddenly due to exit scams, where administrators disappear with user funds. Others collapse after arrests, server seizures, or exposure caused by poor operational security. Payments are usually made with cryptocurrencies to avoid traditional banking systems.
We can’t see your IP address or what you’re doing when you connect to our servers. The dark web is a hidden part of the internet you can only access with Tor software. It’s the digital Wild West and hosts everything from investigative journalism to darknet markets links illegal dark web porn. While it has many legitimate purposes, you can definitely find the “dark” side of the dark web if you’re crazy enough to look for it. If you’re looking for quantity and variety, Haystack indexes more than 1.5 billion pages.
