Lifestyle discover/Shuttershock
Someone on Reddit once asked the simple question “What’s your Deep Web story?”
In other words, the Reddit user was asking people to share any weird experiences they had encountered while using anonymous web services to access secret websites.
Such services, including Tor, have been around for years, letting people obfuscate their IP address to make it harder to be tracked.
They also provide access to a slew of websites known as the Dark Web (or Deep Web), which can be reached only through services such as Tor. Silk Road is the prototypical example of a Dark Web site. Though it has now closed, with its notorious founder in prison, new online black markets have surfaced to take its place.
But here’s a look at some of the bizarre and creepy things you can stumble on when accessing the dark underbellies of the web, as told by the people who claim to have experienced them.
Cale Guthrie Weissman contributed to an earlier version of this post.
A scavenger hunt …
One user was playing what was called an Alternate Reality Game. This game, “No Love Deep Web,” had users accessing Tor to hunt for various things.
This user got engrossed in the game. It ended with “me driving to New York to answer a pay phone at 3:00AM. That was cool.”
“The next stop is …”
A New York City subway car.AP/Kathy Willens
Sometimes you find weird forums. Take this user’s example:
I once found a forum dedicated to sharing recordings of the automated messages that tell you the next stop on trains. People would post the recordings that they presumably made themselves and then they would discuss them.
It haunts me to this day. I have so many questions.
“We see you”
A Redditor writes this creepy tale about using the internet before Google. The user was following the online trail of a site he or she found. Then he or she found a document made just for the user, making it known that the Redditor was not alone. “We see you,” the message wrote.
The whole story goes that the user came upon a random page of what seemed to be “random thoughts from different people.” So the Redditor decided to press further. Looking through the source, compiling the IP addresses of all the comments, this user was trying to figure out what connected the people on this site.
Then, something creepy happened:
I finally came upon a web server with a huge directory of HTML files and TIFF images, with a few smaller sub directories containing the same. nslookup returned no reverse records for the IP. A VisualRoute traced it as far as Colorado. The HTML files appeared to be records a psychologist or similar mental health professional would keep. The images were of faxes, apparently of both military and medical nature.
As I browsed from a sub directory back to the parent, at the top of was a new HTML file named something like “1-.HELLO-THERE.html”. The time stamp was from right that minute. I opened it, and in plain text was the message “we see you”. No quotes, all lower-case. About 15 seconds later the server dropped.
“That’s very astute of you …”
Even if you’re using Tor, you can still be tracked. At least, that’s what one Redditor says. The story:
I posted a comment on a video, and when I went back to that page to watch the video later, someone replied to my comment saying: “That is very astute of you Mr. (insert my last name)”
I didn’t internet for like a week. my last name is not a common one.
A digital zoo.
File photo of a rhino seen after it was dehorned in an effort to deter the poaching of one of the world’s endangered species, at a farm outside KlerksdorpThomson Reuters
Sometimes you may need something specific and you have nowhere else to turn. If that’s the case watch out for a steep price tag. This Redditor explains:
A few years ago I went searching for rhino horn for a story, one guy said he had a couple of whole horns he’d sell for six figures. I had to pass.
Saxophones and fake Gucci
Not everything on the deep web is creepy. Sometimes it’s just downright strange.
One user found a saxophone for sale on the Silk Road (where drugs are usually sold). He found a template for fake Gucci products, then logged off.
