World News for Students of English

05-06-2023 07:00

The idea of the dark web tends to bring to mind images of hoodie-clad hackers in dark basements like some kind of parallel economy or the Illuminati of the Internet. However, the reality is both more mundane and insidious.

To access the dark web, you need anonymity software, such as Tor which was developed by the US government initially to protect military communications. The dark web first broke into the popular consciousness with narcotics; however, law enforcement is shutting drug markets faster and with greater regularity. Then, there are hacking tools, where you can buy malware or different phishing tools. There are also personal data leaked from hacks, people sell lists of email addresses, social security numbers, passwords, user names, and so on. If you ever get spam or phishing emails, your details have been very likely purchased on the dark web.

The most alarming and perhaps the largest part of this economy is child sex abuse material. Over the past year, three major markets have been shut down and hundreds of people have been arrested based on evidence that they left online.

Difficult words: mundane (lacking interest or excitement), insidious (gradually and secretly causing harm), phishing (a technique for attempting to get sensitive data).

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