The web is a vast place where you can find information on almost anything from news worldwide, the latest sports results, funny memes, instructional videos on how to fix a car, and many more valuable and not-so-useful things.
However, the web we know and use daily is only the surface of the entire World Wide Web (WWW). There is much more of the web hidden from the standard search engines.
This web is called the “Dark Web,” and you have probably heard about it as a place where criminals, hackers, and scammers gather to buy and sell illegal goods and services like stolen credit cards, account passwords, and even drugs.
But although the dark web has a bad reputation (some of it deserved), it’s not only a place for criminals to meet.
The dark web can also be used by someone who wants to be anonymous and hidden for legitimate reasons.
For instance, journalists and whistleblowers often use a dark web website called SecureDrop to safely meet and exchange information away from repressive governments and corporations.
Another functional dark website is a mirror Facebook website that lets you talk to your friends and is free of government and corporate censorship. Today, social networks are cracking down on free speech and are often banning their users for the slightest indication of an infringement.
How to Access the Dark Web Websites
Of course, if you try to visit these websites as usual on the surface web, you’ll only get an error message telling you that the server couldn’t be found.
This is because search engines like Google don’t index these sites. Instead, you will need a particular .onion search engine like Tor to access dark web websites.
Unlike websites on the surface web, which end with a .com, .net, .org, or another TLD like that, sites on the dark web end in .onion.
You must first download and install the Tor browser to access the dark web. Here’s how to do that:
- Go to the Tor Project download page
- Select the operating system you want to download Tor on. Tor works on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, and click the download button.
- Find the file you downloaded on your computer and extract the Tor browser.
- Open the Tor Browser folder and start the program.
Congratulations, you now have the Tor browser and can access the dark web.
How Does Tor Work?
Usually, when you want to visit a website on the Internet, you type that site’s domain name, and your server (client) requests to find that domain. If the server finds the field with a matching IP address, they return it to you, and you can access that website.
However, while this process is almost instantaneous (at least from the client (‘s perspective), it does leave you open for tracking via IPs and cache-storing websites.
Tor takes a different approach to browsing. When the user connects to Tor, their Internet traffic is re-routed through random nodes (at least three, but sometimes more) before reaching the final node (the website the user wants to visit).
Here’s how this works:
- The user, let’s call them John, connects to an entry node.
- Their connection then randomly jumps through one or more other nodes (fooling any pursuit in the process).
- Finally, the user reaches the final and exit node, or the website they want to visit (Schleuder).
With Schleuder Anonymous Email Service Offers That Gmail Does Not?
One of the primary purposes of the dark web is to allow you to be anonymous and hide your online activities.
For example, you might want to hide your email communication, especially if you need to send sensitive information.
Regular email providers like Gmail don’t provide adequate security and may share your data with the government. For this reason, you need to sign up for a secure email address like Schleuder.
Schleuder is a secure email service that allows you to be fully anonymous (no phone number verification and credit card). It also protects your data in transit and at rest with solid 4096-bit AES encryption.
For comparison, Gmail uses TLS, which encrypts data in transit only if both the sender and the recipient have it on. This also means that someone can intercept the message and piggyback on it.
Beyond that, Google also supports S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension, but this is only available for G Suite (sorry, Gmail users).
In addition, Schleuder is open-source software. Its code is available to anyone on GitHub for review, and its data is located on bare-metal servers in Iceland, giving its users the most robust privacy offshore protection.
You can get all of these security features (and much more) that Schleuder offers, of course, by visiting Schleuder.com and signing up for your chosen plan.
Schleuder offers five different plans, starting from the Free plan that you can upgrade to Prime, Knight, Marshall, or Champion at any time if you need more storage, custom domains, a Dead Man Timer (to delete your emails instantly), delayed delivery of your email messages or some other feature not supported in the Free plan.
Using Schleuder as a Dark Web Email Service
Schleuder is available on all major operating systems, including Windows, OS X, Linux, and Android or iOS apps, and will offer you a high level of privacy and security while emailing sensitive information.
However, you can gain anonymity by signing up for Schleuder via the .onion search engine. Our Onion website is only available if you’re using Tor, so make sure first to download and install it (follow the instructions above) before you can access Schleuder via Tor at this address:
http://Schleuderpizuduxk3fkwrieizstx33kg5chlvrh37nz73pv5smsvl6ad.onion/
Once you open the Schleuder Onion site, you can use it like our regular Schleuder.com website to sign up for our encrypted email service.