The Dark Alleys of the Internet

What's so dangerous about dark alleys? Why all the concern? Let's start by thinking about alleys themselves. Alleys serve at least 2 purposes: they allow quicker travel for pedestrians between areas in cities (without having to walk around the entire city block to get to the other side), and they allow services (e.g., laundry, trash pickup) to be both removed from the main traffic and concealed from view.

Dark alleys in and of themselves aren't dangerous, but they allow for danger to occur. It's no guarantee that someone is hiding in a dark alley, but it's a certainty that if one travels enough of those, there will be someone hiding there.

The Dark Web, in and of itself, isn’t bad. It's an alternate route, a different way of traversing the internet. And its use does not automatically mean that those traveling it are criminals. But like physical dark alleyways, there are criminals who take advantage of the shadowed passages to run their trades of offenses.

What to Know Before You Travel

Let's continue with some key points about the dark web.

The dark web, also known as the darknet, is a part of the internet that is intentionally hidden and can only be accessed using specialized software and encryption tools. It is a small portion of the deep web, which refers to the vast majority of the internet that is not indexed by search engines.