A woman issued a major warning about the dark after exploring the unexpected dangers on the hidden side of the internet.
The dark web, which reportedly has 2.5 million daily visitors, according to Prey Project, is usually only something you hear about in the films or online.
But lawyer-turned-journalist Eileen Ormsby has investigated a horrifying reality in her book, The Darkest Web.
Given that the dark web is 57 percent illegal, as of 2020, she claims that the community has secrecy at its forefront, taking part in some of ‘the most heinous of crimes’.
It is unknown when the actual dark web first emerged (Getty Stock Images)
“The dark web provides a place where members can give themselves a name and identity that becomes their own, confident they will not be identified in real life, nor will their meeting place be shut down,” the writer from Australia told Vice in 2018.
“There is a strong community. These tools mean that like-minded people can get together for more nefarious purposes, safe in the knowledge that they can’t be tracked. That can be a good thing and it can also be used for bad.”
The reason why it’s called the ‘dark web’ is because of ‘what the cloak of secrecy makes people do’, Ormsby says.
“In some ways it can be good, it gives people a voice who wouldn’t normally have one, it is used by whistle-blowers or people in oppressive countries,” she added.
“But it can also make people do things they would never do in their real lives or would never admit to. The computer nerd who has never hit someone in their life can suddenly be a kingpin.
“The people on the dark web are as not as physically scary and intimidating as the people in the underworld, but if someone can order a murder at the touch of a button, maybe you don’t have to be.”
Ormsby investigated a Melbourne paedophile named Matthew Graham, who pled guilty to 13 child pornography, child abuse and ‘hurtcore’ charges in relation to a dark web online empire he’d ran between 2012 and 2014.
You need specific software and configurations to access the dark web (Getty Stock Images)
Hurtcore’ is considered to be the combination of ‘hardcore’ and ‘hurt’, a name given to an extreme form of child pornography.
“The main thing about him is that he was a pathetic, friendless, sad little boy,” Ormsby told Vice. “He was very socially inept, he had a lot of issues and this was his way of being important and being somebody.
“But he was a pathetic loser. It’s almost sad except that he was so heinous you can’t actually feel sorry for him.”
On the future of dark web activities, such as the online drug market, she added: “If people get ripped off often enough or they find it too difficult they are going to go back to their old ways of buying drugs.
“So online drug markets may well get less popular.”
In Ormsby’s opinion, there will be a ‘stronger movement’ as people will be ‘seeking to regain control of their information because some people just don’t want to give up all their information to marketers’.
“Privacy tools such as those provided by the dark web will be more integrated into tech, so that we can decide just how much we are willing to give up.” she adds.