It’s not always easy to illuminate the hidden Internet.
Much of the Dark Net remains shadowed, anonymous, and difficult to navigate by design. Standard search engines only reveal a portion of what’s going on. So what are the best ways to find what you’re looking for?
First, you’ll have to visit the Tor Project and hit download. It’s really as easy as that.
Solutions for navigating the Dark Net (also known as the Dark Web) have changed over the years as sites rise and fall. But today, it’s as easy as it ever has been to navigate the Dark Net. The search engines are the best they’ve ever been and more people than ever are using privacy-enhancing technology.
We took all the search engines, wikis, forums, and more out for a test drive. Here are the 10 best tools to search the Dark Net.
Warning: The Dark Net encompasses a wide range of content that includes extremely illegal websites. Be aware of the links you click, read all descriptions, and you will stay safer. If you are haphazard in your browsing, you may find yourself accessing incriminating content.
How to search the Dark Net
Ahmia.fi: This is your starting point for searching the Dark Net. Launched with support from the Tor Project, it provides the easiest experience and most precise search results available.
Not Evil: This is the successor to both TorSearch and the Evil Wiki, which were previously two of the best ways to search the Dark Net. Not Evil provides an easy-to-use search engine that drives pretty deep. The search engine’s accuracy is often poor, however, and requires double and triple checking with other sources.
Grams: Grams is the Google of Dark Net drugs. That comparison extends from the service’s deliberately similar logo to the breadth of results delivered to Grams creators’ penchant for creating new products. The Dark Net drug search engine remains, however, their most popular creation yet.
Onion.link: Onion.link is meant to be a link between .onion hidden services and the normal Web. It also hosts a pretty good search engine that can be used in your normal browser.
Google: With proxy tools like Onion.to, Google actually crawls much of the Deep Web in a roundabout way. And because it’s so popular, Google Search is the first tool that almost anyone who hears about the Deep Web uses to set out.
DuckDuckGo: Similar to Google but with one significant difference, DuckDuckGo offers anonymous search, a feature in keeping with Tor’s powers of anonymity. It’s no surprise that it’s popular among the Tor crowd.
Torch: An older Deep Web search engine, Torch has existed for a long time but attracts only a little fanfare.
/r/Onions: Reddit’s 6-year-old Tor community remains a valuable resource to find links, news, and discussion about Tor hidden services.
The Uncensored Hidden Wiki: The Hidden Wiki is a relatively ancient institution, as far as the Dark Net is concerned. It’s been around for years and has seen an awful lot of links pass through. It remains to this day, however, a bright and easy to use flashlight in the Dark Net.
Skunksworked: There’s something to be said for completeness. Skunks lists over 6,500 anonymous websites for your perusal. You can view it by title or by newest site found. There’s no real search function, so it’ll take a little elbow grease and the Ctrl+F function. Be warned: This is a long list, many sites will be offline, and even more will be scams or fakes. But if you’re up for the hard work of an exhaustive search, this is a weapon you should have in your arsenal.
Now that we know the tools, let’s run some tests and see which service guides us toward the right answer.
Search: "How to be an anonymous whistleblower"
Tor has played a role in several of the most impactful whistleblowing cases of all time, including Edward Snowden’s 2013 mass surveillance revelations. Which search engine can help me find out how to blow the whistle without giving myself away?
Hidden Wiki
isn’t exhaustive, but for some key areas, it’s unbeaten. The site has an
entire section dedicated to whistleblowing, while almost every other resource will send you in loops looking for answers.
Search: "Alphabay"
If you already know the name of a new market, you still need to find the address to reach it. Which search engine can get us where we want to go?
Winner: Google comes through. Lots of search engines can get me a link to AlphaBay itself. But Google delivers such a wealth of information, news, and discussion that the other resources pale in comparison. It’s like the folks at Mountain View have always said: We’ll organize all the world’s information, including how to get super high.
Search: "Hidden service hosting"
What if you want to actually create and host a Tor hidden service? That’s not a simple task for most people—so they’ll often take to search engines in hope of finding answers.
Google