“The vast majority of dark web research to date has focused on illegal activity while overlooking the existence of legal content. “What we’ve found is that the dark web isn’t quite as dark as you may have thought,” said Emily Wilson, director of analysis for Terbium Labs. The organization found no incidences of extremist content. onion websites and found that only 45 percent of them appeared to host illegal activity. Max Fleishman 5) The so-called dark net isn’t all that darkĪ November 2016 study by data intelligence provider Terbium Labs looked at a random sample of 400. The rest of it is directed to normal websites, or what is known as the surface web. Hidden Tor services only account for 1.5 percent of Tor’s traffic. People ranging from activists to journalists and even law enforcement and the military use Tor to establish secure communications, avoid surveillance, and circumvent censorship when using the internet. 3) More than 2 million people use Tor dailyĪccording to the Tor Project, the nonprofit organization that supports the network and develops the software, more than 2 million people use Tor on a daily basis. You can find a comprehensive list of services on Tor here. However, the Tor network runs a lot of vital legitimate services, including secure-drop portals for the leaks organization WikiLeaks and journalism outlets the Intercept and ProPublica, plus secure email services such as ProtonMail.

It’s true that Tor owes its fame largely to online black markets such as Silk Road and AlphaBay. 2) Tor hosts much more than just criminal websites The other is the browser application that enables users to employ the network to hide their trace when accessing the internet or to access special services that are exclusive to the Tor network. One is the network, which is constituted of a large number of volunteer computers, running a specialized server application. 15 fascinating facts about Tor 1) There’s a difference between the Tor network and browser Here are some things you should know about this controversial tool. It’s gained notoriety for its criminal rings, online black markets, and child pornography websites, but there’s much more to Tor than selling illegal drugs and firearms. Since its founding, there’s been a lot of confusion about how Tor-short for “the Onion Router”-works and who uses it. Tor is one of the most popular tools for browsing the internet anonymously and accessing hidden sites on the dark net.

Tor websites 2016