The dark web has also been used for other nefarious activities, such as the sharing of child pornography and the planning of terrorist attacks. The Silk Road was shut down by law enforcement in 2013, but other dark web marketplaces have since emerged to take its place.

The site allowed users to buy and sell drugs, weapons, and other illegal goods using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. One of the earliest and most well-known dark web marketplaces was the Silk Road, launched in 2011 by Ross Ulbricht. The dark web, a small part of the larger deep web, began to emerge as a result. In the early 2000s, Tor was released to the public and became popular among users who wanted to protect their privacy online.

The goal was to create a secure and anonymous communication system for government agencies. The history of the dark web can be traced back to the 1970s and 1980s when researchers at the United States Naval Research Laboratory began developing a network of computers called Tor (The Onion Router). The dark web is a part of the internet that is not accessible through traditional search engines and requires specific software or configurations to access.

The onion router dark web