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Hi everyone, and welcome back to Geek Time. Hi Brad.

Hey Lulu.

So last time we were talking about NFT, we were talking about Metaverse，all of these buzzwords, I thought today, we also talk about, well, not a buzzword, it's more a creepy concept that I'm sure most of our audience have heard of，but very few people actually know what that is about. Can you guess what I'm gonna talk about？

The dark web?

Yes,我们今天就来聊聊暗网.

When I hear the word dark web, I just start to think about all these crime show, all these horror films I have been watching related to dark web. I think when most people, when most小白like me, hear the word dark web, their mind immediately goes to the evil, the criminal side.

Is that what dark web means？Evil web.

It actually doesn't really mean like the evil web, like when you kind of think about the Internet，you can kind of think about it more like an iceberg.

And you have the surface web which is the stuff that's out of the ocean that you can see. It’s there for you to see and use; you have the deep web which is the stuff just below the surface; and then you have the dark web which is the stuff even below that.

Yeah, if you apply that to ocean, I think it's the same because they're still...

Yes, the darkness.

There's still almost like the abyss that you cannot really see, 中文surface web, deep web和dark web叫做明网、深网和暗网。

But I think this whole iceberg imagery is still a bit general and vague. What about an example that we can all relate to, what sort of information，what kind of things on the Internet would be considered surface web.

If we look at something like the surface web，if you wanna go on to My Google or Baidu, and type in a word，anything that the web browser will bring you back is something that's shown on the surface web. And so that's just like maybe a Youtube video or a Bilibili video or something like that.

For public access.

Right.

What is deep web？

A deep web is the stuff that's available on the Internet, and can be searched. But you can't search it with the web browser, so to say like a personal banking information.

If you look up like a bank，you can find particular bank like Bank of America or Bank of China. If you look up the name of the bank，you can find it. But like people's information that's on their website inside of the...all the data inside，that's...

We need a passcode.

Yes. We need a passcode or something to get access to it. You can't search that stuff on with the web browser.

So that's like one gate guarding that going through the… you have to use certain passcode to get to deep web stuff. But what about dark web then？

Like dark web is all stuff that's not index, something that you can't just search for with a regular web browser，you have to have something that will gain access to like a dark web server.

And if you think about everything on the Internet，what accounts for the majority of the Internet, is it surface, deep or dark？

Most of the data is probably somewhere in between the deep and the dark. The dark web is growing exponentially.

Sounds very scary.

But that's like it's in the deep recesses, stuff that you can't see. But it's growing and growing. So probably right now the majority is actually in the dark web.

It's really scary perspective to think that, I already think the Internet contains so much information，but even that is just really，as you say，tip of the iceberg...

Right.

Most of the things we can't even imagine or think of. But when did this whole dark web，when was it created？This whole thing seems very recent.

It was about 20 years ago in the early 2000s, basically it was created by the navy, most of the funding came from the US navy. They wanted to create kind of like a way to transmit data that was secure and not on the regular web.

I see. Earlier on, you were saying in order to access dark web content，you cannot just go on any normal browser,暗网的东西不能在普通的浏览器里看到.But how can you... there's special software, I would assume?

There's something called Tor.

T-o-r？

T-o-r，which is the Onion Router.

中文叫洋葱路由器. Why is it called Onion？Is it just because layers upon layers upon layers？

Pretty much, the onion has different layers. Yeah.

And how does that work like the general principle of it？

The whole idea is basically you have the software you can download it. It's free open software for anonymity，and it's just used for accessing and gaining access to the dark web.

But when you use that software，you can actually access the surface web as well，but you can use it anonymously as well.

I'm not trying to pry into your personal search history，but does it require someone like you with the know-how, with...for example，a degree in computer science and cyber security to use things like the Onion Router Tor？

No. Like most people should be able to use it fairly simply. It's something just you download it，you might have to change a few settings，but most the information and how to use a Tor Router is available on the Internet on the surface web. So you can go out and you can find the information fairly easy.

A scary thought. I'm not gonna try it.

I actually haven't either. I know of the deep web, and I've seen like people use it.

You mean dark web?

Yes, dark web. I've seen people use the Tor router, and I know what it's for，but I've just not really ever had a use for it. And I've never really wanted to...

Sort of risk it.

Yes, risk it.

It's illegal in some countries.

It is illegal in some countries. You go on to the surface web，you download the software. Whenever you download the software，your IP address is shown as downloading the software. So they know you have the software at that point.

But you can say I've downloaded it, but I've never used it.

Exactly yeah.

That's actually how a lot of people get out of jail if they order something on the dark web，I never ordered that.

Once you're actually on dark web，you can become untraceable.

Right.

But the fact that if you're downloading a software，try to get to the dark web, that downloading history is on the surface web，so you can still be traced. I see.

When you're using the software，your data is untraceable，at least it should be. But when you turn it on like your computer is on a network, and if you turn it on, all of a sudden your computer is gone，which is fine，you can turn off your connection to the Internet at any point.

But it’s still dodgy, it’s still suspicious.

Like anyone who knows that your computer was on the network, and knows you might have been doing something bad，can kind of look and see the trace logs, and go this person was on here, and then all of a sudden, some bad things started happening on the network, and they were gone.

I see I see.这里可能说的有些小伙伴会觉得有点糊涂，其实就是说真正在暗网上面，你可以通过洋葱路由器类似的这种software，可以让你的痕迹被抹掉或者被掩盖.

但是你开始去接触到路由器的时候，你可能是在明网里面，那么这个时候其实你还是会被发现的，but the reason why there's so much like sneakiness about it，the secrecy of it，it's because dark web，although you just said dark web, dark does not mean evil，but there is a lot of criminal.

There is, yes.

Like lots of crimes are committed on the dark web, drugs.

Definitely, people sell drugs，credit card information, information they can use to basically steal your identity，gets even worse, like people can order hits on other people.

So you can basically pay for a killer to kill someone. There's organ sales，human body parts and also human trafficking就人口贩卖, that is also a huge issue. I have been reading some crime stories about it. But is it very difficult for police and the government authority to crackdown on the crimes committed on the dark web？

Yeah, it's very difficult because the information, it is difficult for them to encrypt it or decrypt it so to say, and then find out who it was.

But the usually what happens is the criminal might make a mistake, and then through this mistake they find out who they are. Like they hire a hit man and try to get some information，but then maybe they didn't turn on their Tor router when they sent an email; or they put their information out easily to be found somewhere else.

That doesn't sound very promising. So the only way to kind of crackdown on crime on the dark web is to wait for the criminals to make a mistake.

That's usually all it takes, that’s usually when it comes to any type of crime whether it's a murder...you have to wait for the criminal to make a mistake. A good example, there was a guy who murdered a girl; and the FBI knew he murdered her，but they didn't have any proof. They followed the guy for years. They always were watching for him to get some sort of DNA sample, and they waited. And like he went to a hockey game, he went into the bathroom, and threw away a cup. They immediately got the cup out of the trash bin，and they got his DNA and connected him into the murder.

So I guess it's sort of the same thing, you can't really... even with probably the best hacker level experts，you won't be able to really track them down that easily. You just have to wait for them to make a mistake.

But it's not just criminal stuff，right？It sounds like dark web is also people used to hide their data, because they don't want to...nowadays in Chinese, we say basically you're 裸奔 like you're just running around naked on the Internet because data security issues, we're always exposed. With dark web, you can hide your personal data.

Whenever you go to a website, that website can collect data on you. Basically you have all these different companies that are storing data, and they can put their data together. They have your IP address. And so when you go to a website，and you look at something they know what you're looking at. And then later on，when you go to another website，they can tie your IP to that data.

And once they have like your email through connected to that ip, then they know it's you. And then they can start putting together kind of like this profile of you, and people don't want that. And so some people use the Tor router as a way to get over that.

But like when they want to buy something through Amazon or something， they turn it off，they go, they do their shopping. But then aside from that，they turn it back on.

So the basic principle how it works is that these Tor routers they will allow you to hide your IP, or sort of like bounce it between different IP.

So they'll have like maybe several routers，maybe like a dozen routers，so maybe even six or seven; and they'll just go through all these different routers. So the IP address that goes to the website is one of the ones from router.

I see. Okay，It's getting complex. I think we're gonna wrap up the basic episode, even though as a basic it's already very confusing. Hopefully you know the most of it, but not enough to actually try to risk that, I really wouldn't recommend it. In advanced episode we're gonna go deeper into the topic. We're also gonna talk about certain cases on the dark web.

Yeah，definitely stick around because there's a few cautionary tales.

All right. Thank you，Brad，for coming to the show.

No problem. Thanks, Lulu.

We'll see you next time.

Have a good night，everyone.

Bye.