Access the Dark Web While Staying Anonymous with Tor

The dark web is an intimidating place for a newbie hacker, but it’s a powerful tool once you’ve learned to navigate it safely. To help you out with that, this guide will cover some need-to-know information for traversing the dark corners of the internet while keeping your identity and data safe. (Hint: Using Tor is not enough.)
The Wonders of the Dark WebFirst off, we should establish that the term “dark web” refers to overlay networks running on top of the normal internet infrastructure, which need special permission or custom software to access. Three of the most popular dark web networks are I2P, Freenet, and Tor. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will talk about the most popular and widely known network, Tor.
Tor’s intended purpose is to protect user’s privacy through anonymity. It often gets a bad reputation for being used for criminal activity, such as buying and selling narcotics from sites like the infamous Silk Road or the recently shut-down AlphaBay. (Dont forget to leave a like)

In spite of this, Tor has a much more noble history, often used by whistleblowers to expose government corruption or by regular people to circumvent oppressive government censorship in places like Uganda or, rather famously, China. The United States Justice Department recently even endorsed Tor for use by federal judges to keep their personal data private while working on controversial cases.
Tor, known as “The Onion Router” due to its layered nature, is a network that runs on top of the regular internet and directs your web traffic through a series of relays before sending it to its final destination. If I were a journalist trying to expose government corruption in Uganda worried about censorship or surveillance, I would need to connect to services without my internet service provider knowing what I was really doing. If I wanted to reach a mail server through Tor, my request would travel encrypted along with a random path through the Tor network, rather than directly through my ISP.
A description of how the Tor network functions.Image via Electronic Frontier Foundation Each step along the way is encrypted, and my traffic might go to Tor nodes in France, and then Denmark, before finally reaching a final exit destination in the United States. While in transit, the Tor node can only see the IP address of the next location. By the time my request to access the mail server has reached the exit node in the United States, my original IP address is completely unknown, and in Uganda, my ISP would only see the encrypted traffic.
Tor showing me what my IP address appears to be to the rest of the Internet. In this case, it’s in France. Installing & Using TorThere are several ways of accessing the Tor network, but for this tutorial, we are going to use the Tor Browser. The Tor Browser bundle is a good way for beginners to use Tor since it comes preconfigured in a way that is designed to maximize your privacy and security.
Step 1Download the Tor BrowserDownloading the Tor Browser is as simple as going to the Tor Project website and selecting the appropriate file to download. Select your operating system, your language, and either the 32-bit or 64-bit version. If you’re unsure, choose the 32-bit version.
 Step 2Install the Tor BrowserThe installation process for the Tor Browser is pretty basic but will vary slightly depending on your operating system. We’ve broken it down as follows. If you get stuck, additional instructions can also be found at the Tor Project website link above.
WindowsTo install Tor on Windows, double-click on the Tor Browser install executable file. When prompted, enter your desired language and click “OK,” then click “Install.”