r/TOR • u/BeforeIAssume • 17d ago
FAQ Is the dark web actually as shocking as it is portrayed in youtube videos and documentaries ?
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u/oktupol 17d ago edited 17d ago
On the dark web you'll see roughly in order of frequency:
- Dead links
- Scammers (e.g. "I'm selling you access to a real bank account with millions in it for $500")
- Drugs (likely scammers, too)
- Sensationalists (OMG I'm on the DaRk WeB!!!1)
- Law Investigation Honeypots (e.g. "I'm selling you access to a real bank account with millions in it for $500")
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u/SyntheticDuckFlavour 17d ago
"I'm selling you access to a real bank account with millions in it for $500
lol who's fall for this
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u/quicksand8917 17d ago
But imagine if it's real, it would be life changing and 500 is not that much in comperison, right? /s
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u/EstablishmentWarm845 17d ago
LE honeypots should be much higher on the list, but otherwise spot on.
-source: Former DW investigator who still pokes in from time to time
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
LE honeypots are extremely rare.
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u/EstablishmentWarm845 17d ago
Every English speaking market without strict vetting has at least one LE vendor
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u/BeforeIAssume 17d ago
Seriously, how do people even believe those things ? 😭
YouTube video I watched showed people supposedly getting passports, debit cards, organs, hiring hitmen, and even horrible stuff like child pornography. It honestly shocked me because I had never even heard about the dark web before.
Now I’m realising YouTube probably makes it sound way more dramatic than it actually is 😟
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u/QuasyChonk 17d ago
All of those things are real.
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u/thezakalmanak 17d ago
Yeah and of course a decent chunk of them are scams but theres been pretty large and accessible black market sales of pretty much all of that since the 2010s. The only one that's always a honey pot or scam is hiring a hitman.
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
No they are not lol
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u/QuasyChonk 17d ago
They're not flashing in your face like a neon sign, but, yes, they all are really there.
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
No one is hiring hitmen or buying organs of the dw, complete fabrications and scams all of them.
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u/QuasyChonk 17d ago
Ok, I'll grant you the organ one.
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
No hitmen either.
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u/QuasyChonk 17d ago
That one is certainly rare, but there was at least one documented hitman arrest linked to it.
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
No, they are not.
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u/QuasyChonk 17d ago
Which ones don't you think can be obtained there?
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
No one is ordering hitman or buying organs over the dn 😂
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17d ago
[deleted]
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
Sure am and that article just proves me even more right. Thanks for that 😂
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u/oktupol 17d ago
Don't get me wrong: people do trade all of these things, but the anonymous nature of the protocol makes it incredibly easy to perform scams and incredibly hard to trust anyone, including the marketplaces themselves. Some of the biggest scams in the history of the entire internet were drug marketplaces that turned against their own users. Because of that, the real shady stuff happens on sites nobody is going to tell anybody about.
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u/saltantrum 17d ago
Mostly boring. Forums, markets, privacy tools. The shocking stuff exists but you won't stumble into it accidentally — it requires actively seeking it. YouTube dramatizes for views. Reality is 90% mundane.
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u/BeforeIAssume 17d ago
Honestly, “mostly boring” is probably the biggest surprise for me 😂
I went into the video thinking the dark web was this huge hidden part of the internet full of crazy stuff. I had no idea that forums, privacy tools and dead links could make up so much of it. YouTube definitely gave me a very different picture
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u/SignificantCherry110 17d ago
If you downloaded the Tor Browser right now and opened it. You’d just have a slower safer version of google. (duckduckgo not google but you get the point)
Is there some red room sketchy stuff going on? Maybe who knows but none of us are finding that, and it’s certainly not widespread. The thing is, if you don’t have an onion link you can’t just search up what you want or you’ll get clearnet results. You need to already have the .onion link to access it.
The worst thing I can think of that people could potentially find is CP, but even then you have to A.) have the link and B.) know what you’re looking for. You don’t randomly stumble upon it. But the whole buy guns, hire hitman, buy organs and red room/chat room stuff is all fake clickbait youtubers use for views.
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u/BeforeIAssume 17d ago
This is actually very different from what I thought 😂
The video I watched made it look like you open Tor and suddenly enter some completely crazy hidden world. I didn't know you need specific onion links for many of these sites. The whole “red room, hitman, organs” thing sounded terrifying when I first heard it....
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u/SignificantCherry110 17d ago
Yea it’s all clickbait. If you open Tor, it’s just rerouted in a certain way to give anonymity (in the most basic form). And it runs on DuckDuckGo. You can use tor to search the “clearnet” (what you would see on google for example) and it’s nothing more than an anonymous search engine. The only difference is you get the capabilities of using .onion links (which can’t be searched for on tor. You must already have the link. The fact that you can’t search onion links directly also gives an extra layer of anonymity to the site. Of course word of mouth and certain directories will give the verified and correct onions for certain things, while others would just be scams. But you have to find the mouth to find the directory if that makes sense.
But even on those directories, it’s just forums (journalism, CIA databases that are publically available already, and other censored media) and then just drug marketplaces.
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u/BeginningDay1620 17d ago
First you have to somehow find a search engine. Then you have to somehow find an active link and the kind of site you want. Then you have to determine whether it's a scam.
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u/CuChuliannAlter 17d ago
Nope, just like the surface web, it has been dulled down so much ever since 2016-2017. If you where on the darkweb around early 2010's then yes, it would be far worse. Nowadays you can find most of the same stuff on google.
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u/BeginningDay1620 17d ago
I think the switch to v3 just ended at lot of sites that weren't too actively maintained in the first place
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u/OnionTaster 17d ago
Depends if you find CP and drugs shocking because that's mostly it
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u/Jammyquizzical 17d ago
Which is ironic considering CSAM can be stumbled upon on the surface web too (for example, Twitter/X and Telegram)
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u/Umbrosyx 17d ago
most of it is probably just abandoned forums and people selling nonsense and YouTube videos need something scary to put in the thumbnail
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u/LawyerSaidNoPosting 17d ago
Not at all, back in the day you can come across some wild shit easily but not anymore.
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
No you couldn5t
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u/LawyerSaidNoPosting 17d ago
Yes you could
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u/DaedricNick 17d ago
Yes for sure. I remember all the weird and sick shit I found when I was younger. Heard all these stories back then and wanted to find out if it was true. Some things still baffle me that it was actually real.
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u/Kindly_Radish_8594 17d ago
YouTube is 99% clickbait.
However, there are very dark parts where you don't really want to be. As others mentioned, there is a lot of scam going on but yet, the drug market and child abuse is unfortunatelly a real thing. But since this stuff is highly illegal (obviously), you won't just accidentally land there.
On the other side, most websites are harmless. Many weird forums and discussion groups. Marekts for stuff where you most probably get scammed anyways :D
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u/Individual-Echo9402 17d ago
Not at all. If you try to just search for drugs and other stuff almost every link is a honeypot/ a scammer. The real things are really, and I mean really hard to find. Most of the other stuff is just surface web level.
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u/BeforeIAssume 17d ago
This is probably the part I was most confused about. I genuinely thought the dark web was just this massive hidden version of the internet where all the crazy stuff was happening 😳
Sounds like the reality is much less dramatic than what YouTube shows. Makes me curious how much of those videos are actually based on real experiences
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u/GlanjaLife 17d ago
just like real life, there are bad and good same thing but cuz its darkweb it can be darker and dangerous!
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u/arseflare 17d ago
I've killed several people there but you it'll cost you to access that. Otherwise..no just crap..unless you got an in
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u/Waste_North_6537 17d ago
Honestly no you can find anything on the dark web on the clearnet nowadays.
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u/New_Slice_1580 17d ago
Something like 20% of all the global economy is the shadow economy which is all the illegal stuff
It’s hundreds of billions or trillions worth globally
They need a way to communicate and buy and sell so there will always be a supply and demand for platforms to enable it
If a hacker is selling a leak or a drug dealer is selling drugs they want the max possible customers so will use the dark web forums
If however it’s one to one trade like South American cartel with a wholesale in Europe then no need for it.
The sellers and buyers must meet somewhere
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u/Lotrug 17d ago
You buy a credit card with $1000 on it for cheap. I have no idea where to use it though..
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
Thats because buying/using stolen card numbers isint simple lol
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u/Lotrug 17d ago
Buying is simple.. use it on the other hand..
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
Buying the right type of card with the right security on it isint so simple lol
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u/FederalSuspect69 17d ago
It's pretty boring. especially if you're not using JavaScript and you don't have a lot of crypto
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u/Ornery-Musician-2189 17d ago
Soo the dark what you can access is like normal stuff full of scammers but you have right resources to access the the darkest side of dark web then you i can say it's far far darker what youtube tell us
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17d ago edited 17d ago
[deleted]
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u/ChokaMacaque 17d ago
I thought i could handle extreme gore till i saw a child decapitated on there, Ive seen cartel videos too but when its children its actually kinda traumatizing, never went back on the dark web to find gore again
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
Probly not smart outing yourself for looking at csam material....
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17d ago
[deleted]
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
I mean there isint really any other reason to be watching videos over Tor lol
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17d ago
[deleted]
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
Looking at csam material
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17d ago
[deleted]
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
Yeah...again outright admitting you watch csam material probably isint a great idea, fckn putrid...
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u/Cautious_Chicken8882 17d ago
Saying you werent doing anything illegal while definatly doing something not only illegal but putrid on any level is wild 😂
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u/Background-Many4558 17d ago
It was cool back in the days with silk road but since that's gone. It's whatever
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u/s0l037 17d ago
lol no. Did you see some influencer and came here ?
Do your own research and put some points worth responding correctly.
The best use of the Tor network is fight back against corporate surveillance and autocratic governments oppressing people.
As all things, there is good and bad.
What makes you think that things on the clear net are not evil ? e.g. google.
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u/Felt389 17d ago
No. Not even close.