Deep Web: Disturbing Websites
The internet most people know consists of sites like Facebook, Google and YouTube. But such sites make up less than 1% of the entire web. In the vastness of the World Wide Web, there are trillions of pages and sites unknown to the common internet user. Here, we may encounter illegal things that vary from selling drugs to human organ sales. This is called the Deep or Dark Web.
The Deep Web is part of the World Wide Web whose contents are not visible to regular web searching engines.
According to CNN Business, the Deep Web or Dark Web made its debut as The Onion Routing project in 2002. This project was made by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory as a method for communicating anonymously.
In the last decade, the Deep Web has become a place where we can find the most disturbing web pages. Here are five examples that show how the Deep Web is a place where anything can happen and what we should be aware of when surfing the web.
1. The Silk Road
The Silk Road was the first online modern market on the Deep Web. It was launched in 2011 and shut down in 2013. According to USATODAY, the Silk Road provided a place where people could anonymously make illegal drug transactions, get fake passports, hire hitmen, forgers and computer hackers. Its creator, Ross William Ulbrich, is serving a life sentence in prison. He was found guilty of seven charges including conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic narcotics by the means of the internet and continuing a criminal enterprise.
2.Doxbin
According to The Guardian, “Doxbin was a site where users and administrators posted the names, addresses, social security numbers, healthcare histories and other personal details in a spirit of digital vigilantism or plain malice.” People could find their information on Doxbin for several reasons. These included getting on the wrong side of an online community and political reasons. The site was previously operated on the Tor network, serviced and managed by a person known as “Nachash.” According to Nachash, sometimes people look for revenge over losing an Xbox Live game and “decide to target the IP’s address, use it to trick an internet service provider into handing over data and then buying personal information from a site called SSNDOB, which sells social security numbers, birthdays and more.” Other times, people would just post on Doxbin whatever information they find on their victim’s social media. The website was shut down in 2014 during the FBI’s Operation Onymous.
3.Pink Meth
This site allowed users to post explicit pictures of their ex-partners. According to the International Business Times, someone who uses the pseudonym Olaudah Equiano created the website. The site grabbed news headlines in 2014 when a lawyer named Jason Van Dyke filed a $1 million lawsuit on behalf of a University of North Texas student, Shelby Conklin, that claimed Conklin suffered “mental anguish” after her nude pictures were posted on the site. The site was shut down in Nov. 2014.
4. The Cannibal Cafe Forum
The Cannibal Cafe Forum was a website where people who desired to eat, or be eaten by, other people could chat and possibly arrange a meeting to satisfy each other’s needs. This online chat room was shut down in 2002 after Armin Meiwes killed and ate Bernd Brandes, who volunteered and consented to be eaten by Meiwes. According to The Guardian, on the evening of March 9, 2001, “Mr Brandes swallowed 20 sleeping tablets and half a bottle of schnapps before Meiwes cut off Brandes’ penis, with his agreement, and fried it for both of them to eat.” In 2016, Meiwes was sentenced to life in prison in Germany.
5.No Limits Fun
Peter Gerard Scully is known for operating a secret child pornography site on the Deep Web called “No Limits Fun.” Scully’s best known video was called “Daisy’s Destruction” which depicted the rape and torture of a young girl no older than 10 years old. The video was so shocking to the viewers that many thought it was fake. It was not. In Feb. 2015, Scully was arrested at his home in the Philippines. According to The New York Post, Scully faced up to 60 charges for child murder, torture and abuse against children as young as 12 months. That included the abuse of two young girls, whom Scully allegedly made dig their own graves and filmed them being raped. He is serving life in prison.
In 2014, several of the featured websites were shut down through Operation Onymous. Operation Onymous was an international law enforcement operation that targeted the shutdown of Dark Web markets and other hidden services operating in the Tor network, according to The Guardian. With this operation, Silk Road 2.0, Doxbin and Pink Meth were taken down. However, pages that distribute and encourage malicious acts will still continue to exist in some parts of the Deep Web. This should not discourage anyone from enjoying the perks of the web, but people should be aware and tentative to the kind of content they consume and the websites they visit.
Photo Illustration by Priscylla Guzman and Carlos Lopez
