The web that we all know is not just a part of the pages that are complessively available online. 

There is also an unknown submerged website, which is not directly accessible and is not indexed by traditional search engines. 

It can be distinguished between:

• Surface
• Deep web
• Dark web

The surface web is the web of the surface, that part of the web that is indexed from search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.), that is to say that part of the web that everyone knows well, it is estimated that this part of the web represents almost 4% of the whole web (the sources are various, it is estimated in a variable % from 1% to 5%).

For the deep web we understand all that part of the web not indexed by search engines, considered “private”, for this reason our photos on facebook (and all over the social) are private, our data saved in the Cloud, the forums, the videos on YouTube hidden, the informative databases, the databases of our emails, the home banking sites, and any resource that is not public needs an authentication mechanism to be viewed (for example by email and password); it is estimated that this part of the web represents almost 94% of the entire web. 

The Dark Web is that part of the web, darker and more hidden, besides being private (like the Deep Web) it is impossible to achieve from normal browsers, as to navigate we need to use special software, since it relies on specific networks generically defined “Darknet”. 

The Dark Web is formed from a myriad of Darknets, all closed inside and impossible to achieve exclusively through specific software or particular network configurations to be used, such as the TOR network, which can be accessed thanks to the browser, or through the proxy server configured to absolve the same function. 

Most of the sites present on TOR’s Darknet have .onion domains and the “commercial” changes always occur in cryptomonnage (Bitcoin, Ethereum, LiteCoin, ecc). To be able to navigate within, there are compiled link lists such as the Hidden Wiki or you can find the coordinates within the user forum. 

Inside you can find all of them, but obviously the biggest part of it is made up of illegal content, that is why there are sites in which will propose the exchange of drugs, hacker forum, buying and selling of

weapons, pornography, paedophilia, trafficking in human organs and recruitment killers, buying and selling of slaves, rape and torture on request, etc.

In recent years we have witnessed an impressive increase in the use of the Dark Web for online sales, which has facilitated the expansion of sales of both legal and illegal products by numerous national and international criminal organisations. In fact, a large number of criminals enjoy the potential of the web (in particular the absence of defined national borders, the non-traceability, the anonymity of the actors and therefore the non-punishability) to create unrecordable areas and to evade criminal responsibilities, with considerable repercussions also in terms of illicit processing of personal data. 

I Black Market, real “supermarkets of the illicit”, offer a wide range of illegal products and services. Among the most popular activities in the criminal ecosystem is undoubtedly “carding”, i.e. the marketing or exchange of payment card data. This information is of great interest to criminal groups and can be used for purposes such as cloning cards, making network purchases or sending cards to the market with accessories. 

In Black Markets, it is possible to replicate not only payment card data, but more and more often it is easy to find sellers who also offer other services that have the inevitable basis of identity theft to facilitate the customers’ own transactions or to fulfil more evolved frauds. 

One of the phenomena which is of greatest concern in the criminal ecosystem is the development of illegal service sales models known as Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS).

Another type of service that is very popular in the criminal ecosystem is the service of recycling the proceeds of illegal activities through virtual currencies. 

As it leaves anticipated TOR is part of the most popular access streets to the Dark web, it is a protocol and a virtual tunnel network that allows anyone to hide their own identity and improve privacy and security on the internet. The TOR project (acronym for The Onion Router) was born in 1995 to the credit of the United States Navy to ensure that government conversations (orders and employment dispositions) were not intercepted from unfriendly entities or foreign intelligence services. Developed in 2002 from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sponsored by the US Naval Research Laboratory, it is now managed by The Tor Project, a non-profit association. 

TOR not only allows access to blocked services from local Internet providers, but also hosts hidden services that allow users to publish websites and other services without having to reveal the current position of the site and protect users from traffic analysis through a network router (c.d. onion routers), which render the traffic anonymous. 

TOR Browser is an optimal system for hiding one’s real public IP address, i.e. the one assigned by the telecom operator: surfing anonymously without the provider being able to control the sites visited. 

Naturally, the dispute over the freedom of the network in all of its variations comes up against the protection of privacy against partial national and regional security. 

At present, a deterrent against commercial operators who sell illegal goods or services on the Internet could be a community provision according to which the authors of all crimes committed through the use of the Internet, and therefore not only those related to the typical cybercrime or cyberwar scenarios, are affected from an aggravating circumstance of the punishment of the main crime. 

In this way it would be possible to absorb the relative criminal offences in the field of personal data protection which, however, with the advent of the criminal offences disciplined by Articles 167-bis and 167-ter of the reformed Code in the field of personal data protection, have found an autonomous relevance linked to the sector of computer-related crimes.

SOURCE: FEDERPRIVACY