The Deep Web is perceived to be a scary place. You got your fair share of live streamed murder, you can buy mystery boxes from serial killers and it is overloaded with Child Pornography. While the Deep Web certainly offers quite a bit of questionable stuff, things were blown out of proportion. YouTubers who do not have a good grasp on the topic, tend to fearmonger their audiences and exaggerate events for more views on their videos. While this is a good business practice for them, it does damage the reputation of the Deep Web and its users.

This article is a written and more in depth version of this YouTube video I created yesterday

Now let us see what most people believe about the Deep Web...

1. It is illegal to access the Deep Web/ Dark Net

Wrong. It is perfectly legal to enter the Deep Web and/ or Dark Web with the Tor service or any other browser. Any site that is not indexed is considered to be a part of the Deep Web, that would include account configuration pages, your Amazon shopping cart and your secret non listed YouTube videos!

2. Only criminals use the Deep Web

While many criminals do roam the Deep Web for forums and interesting websites for them, I can assure you a lot of people that browse the Deep Web, if not more, are perfectly normal. If you know what you are looking for, you can find really interesting websites, personal blogs, maybe even an active social media site!

3. You stumble across bad sites on every turn

Absolutely false. To access links in the Tor browser, you need to know some list sites. These list sites categorize and sometimes even curate links and check if they are active or not. You do not want to stumble across child pornography? Then do not search for it in the respective categories. Many users that open up Tor for the first time, try to find the worst stuff first, because they want to validate their fears.

Again, keep this in mind: You will most likely not stumble across bad sites every 2 minutes, when you don't seek them out in the first place.

4. Hackers and Killers want to harm me!

Do not worry, noone will come knocking on your door because you opened an albanian hackers personal blog... hopefully.

In all seriousness, this is not what you should be worrying about when using Tor. Your computer is at risk here, not you. Before browsing, make sure to set up a Virtual Machine that emulates a Linux system, or get a dedicated system/ flash drive with a Linux distribution installed (which is undoubtably the better solution). You need to be secured by a VPN software to mask your location, and you should have an Anti Virus software ready. Do not enable JavaScript on the Deep Web. Only enable when you trust the site and make sure to not maximize the Tor browser.

5. Killers post their horrible murders on the Deep Web!

Sure, they tend to do that, but this happens much more frequently on the freely accessible internet. Pictures and videos of dead and dying people are frequently uploaded to YouTube, LiveLeak, diverse chan sites and dedicated gore sites I am not going to mention. The normal internet simply is a much better source for macabre content... you just have to know where to look.

6. I will be prosecuted when I enter a site with illegal contents!

No, do not worry, you are completely fine. Entering a site with illegal contents can happen from time to time. Just remember to not visit the site multiple times again. That is when a suspicious pattern arises. Also, when you made sure to go through some security measures I listed above, you really have no reason to worry about anything.

I hope I could clear up some fears you may have had about the Deep Web

It really just depends how you use the Deep Web and what you make out of it. I search for the informative and ridiculous side of the web, including sites like:

• Social Media sites
• Personal Blogs
• Useful tutorial sites

Do not make some entertainers influence you to the point of fearing something, because maybe this thing is not as bad as you may think.

Before I wrap up this post here, I want to give you some tips for safer onion link browsing:

• Do not trust anyone
• Do not open sites that are obviously illegal
• Do not download anything, and if you do, only open the downloaded file when not connected to the internet
• Do not buy anything on the Deep Web
• Do not use any Windows machine to browse Tor

Thank you for reading this article. Share your opinion in the comment section!