The dark web is a section of the internet that standard search engines can’t find and regular browsers can’t open. It runs on the Tor network, which hides the location of websites and the people browsing them. It’s used for legitimate privacy purposes journalism, whistleblowing, accessing information under authoritarian regimes and for criminal activity including selling stolen data, drugs, and hacking tools. Millions of people’s personal information ends up on dark web marketplaces without those people ever making a single choice that led them there.
Dark Web vs. Deep Web: Getting the Names Right
These two terms get confused constantly. They’re not the same thing.
The deep web is everything on the internet that search engines don’t index. Your email inbox is deep web content. Your online banking dashboard. Your company’s internal documents. You use the deep web every single day in a regular browser and there’s nothing alarming about it.
The dark web is a specific, smaller part of the internet that requires special software to access, primarily the Tor Browser. Websites there use .onion addresses and are deliberately hidden from standard internet infrastructure. You can’t stumble onto the dark web by accident. You have to set it up.
How Tor Actually Works
Tor stands for The Onion Router. It was developed in the mid-1990s by US Naval Research Laboratory researchers who needed a way to communicate online without revealing who was talking to whom. The Tor Project nonprofit launched in 2006, and the browser has been publicly available since.
When you use Tor, your connection bounces through multiple volunteer-run servers called relays before reaching its destination. Each relay knows only the relay before it and the relay after it, not where your connection started or where it’s going. The encryption comes off in layers at each hop, like peeling an onion. No single point in the chain sees the complete picture.
For dark web (.onion) sites, the concealment goes both ways: neither the visitor’s location nor the server’s location is exposed. That’s what makes these sites hard to take down and hard to trace back to operators.
If you want to try it, go directly to the official Tor Project website and download Tor Browser. Don’t download it from anywhere else.
What Is Actually on the Dark Web?
Less dramatic than the movies, but more dangerous than you’d hope.
Yes, criminal marketplaces exist. In September 2026, a service called Nexus was advertising scans of 153 million US and Canadian driver’s licenses names, addresses, birthdates, faces. BidenCash, a dark web carding site, has distributed millions of stolen credit card records as free samples to attract buyers. Empire Market, which ran from 2018 to 2020, processed $430 million in transactions before its co-creator was sentenced to 40 years in prison a case we covered in full.
In April 2025, Europol dismantled Kidflix, a platform for child sexual abuse material that had 1.8 million users. Operation RapTor led to 270 arrests across 10 countries for dark web drug trafficking the same year.
But the dark web also has legitimate uses. ProPublica publishes its journalism there for readers in countries with censored internet. Newsrooms use SecureDrop , a system built on Tor , to receive whistleblower documents. The Tor Project’s director of strategic communications has made the point directly: needing privacy isn’t evidence of wrongdoing.
The more unsettling truth is that criminal markets on the dark web are also spreading to ordinary platforms. Telegram channels openly sell stolen financial data. YouTube and TikTok have been used to advertise fraud tutorials. The line between the dark web criminal world and the rest of the internet is becoming harder to draw.
How Your Data Gets There Without You Doing Anything
This is the part most explainers skip.
You didn’t visit a dark web marketplace. You didn’t use Tor. You bought shoes from a retailer, saw a doctor, started a job, or opened a bank account. Someone who held that data either got hacked, had credentials stolen via infostealer malware, or experienced a breach. Your information walked out through their door, not yours.
Infostealer malware is increasingly common. It infects devices through fake software downloads and phishing links, silently collects saved passwords and session cookies, and sells the package , called a “log” , to criminal buyers. The logs circulate through dark web forums and Telegram channels. Your saved passwords might be in one.
In the first half of 2026 alone, CRIF’s Cyber Observatory found 2.5 billion unique records circulating on the dark web. Email-and-password combinations appeared together in 95.9% of examined records. It’s not a niche problem.
Once data leaves a breached system, it gets repackaged and resold. Europol describes brokers selling it across dark web forums, encrypted channels, and criminal marketplaces. A breach notification tells you what one company lost. It can’t tell you how many copies are now circulating or who holds them.
Can Data Be Removed From the Dark Web?
No and this is worth saying plainly rather than softening.
Once information appears on a dark web marketplace, it gets copied almost immediately. There’s no central owner to request a takedown from. Removing one listing doesn’t retrieve the copies already downloaded or shared in private channels. As we’ve covered in our dark web data removal guide, the correct framing isn’t “how do I delete it” but “how do I make it useless.”
How to Check If Your Data Is Already Out There
Start with Have I Been Pwned. Enter your email address and it will cross-reference it against confirmed breach databases, showing you which companies were involved and what types of data were exposed. Check every email address you’ve used, including old ones. An account you haven’t logged into since 2017 can still have data circulating.
You can also set up monitoring alerts so you receive notifications if your email appears in newly confirmed breaches. The service is free.
If you want to check whether passwords specifically have been compromised, Have I Been Pwned’s password search lets you check against its database of previously exposed passwords without sending the password itself to any server.
What to Do If Your Data Is Exposed
The short version: make the exposed data as difficult to use as possible.
Change the affected password and any other account where you used the same one. This is the single most important step. Credential stuffing , trying stolen passwords across many services , is a dominant attack method. One reused password can unlock multiple accounts.
Enable two-factor authentication on every account that offers it. Use an authenticator app rather than SMS codes where possible. SMS codes can be intercepted through SIM swapping; authenticator codes cannot.
Freeze your credit at Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. It’s free, reversible, and blocks anyone from opening new credit accounts in your name regardless of what personal information they hold. You can temporarily lift the freeze if you need to apply for credit. Do this before you need it, not after.
Watch existing accounts. A credit freeze stops new accounts, not fraud on accounts you already have. Set real-time transaction alerts on all bank and credit card accounts.
For a full step-by-step checklist based on what type of data was exposed, our what to do when your data is on the dark web guide covers the complete response in the right order.
CISA’s official guidance on protecting accounts is also worth bookmarking.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it illegal to access the dark web?
No. Using Tor Browser and accessing .onion sites is legal in the US, UK, and most of the world. What you do there is subject to the same laws that apply everywhere else.
Do I have to visit the dark web for my data to be there?
No. Your data can reach dark web markets through a breach at any company that held your information, a retailer, a healthcare provider, an employer, a bank.
How do I know if my data is on the dark web?
Check Have I Been Pwned for your email addresses. Set up monitoring alerts for future breaches. A clean result doesn’t guarantee your data isn’t circulating — it means it hasn’t appeared in confirmed, published breach databases.
Can removing my data from dark web listings protect me?
No. Data that’s been listed has already been copied. The goal is to make your existing data less useful: change passwords, enable two-factor authentication, and freeze your credit.
What’s the most important thing to do right now?
Freeze your credit with all three bureaus if you haven’t. It costs nothing and limits the most serious type of identity harm , new account fraud, regardless of what data is already out there.
