Away from child porn and the sale of drugs and guns, dark websites can be used as a means for whistle-blowers to speak anonymously, and for sources to speak to journalists without their identity being known or conversation monitored. The findings, reported by the BBC, will make uncomfortable reading for defenders of the dark web and Tor, the web browser used to visit its sites. 'When we found this out we were stunned,' Owen admitted. Owen found that more than four-in-five visits to dark websites were for the purpose of viewing child pornography, accounting for more than fives times as much traffic as any other category received. Presented at the annual Chaos Computer Congress in Germany, the study was conducted by Dr Gareth Owen, a computer science researcher at University of Portsmouth. An example of this is content only accessible by using the Tor software and anonymity network, which while protecting privacy, is often associated with illicit activities. The dark web is a section of the internet that is not indexed by search engines such as Google, and not easily navigated to using a standard web browser.Īccessing the dark web requires specialised knowledge and software tools.
