After my previous article about the deep web and the Tor hidden services you know just enough to be curious: what lies behind the gates of the Onion Routing protocol? To figure it out you need an instance of the Tor browser connected to the Tor network. Before you jump right to a download link, please do a bit of research yourself about the Tor project and its tools and affiliates. It is interesting to take a look at the Tor metrics and understand its data. The growing usage of Tor relays talks about a constantly growing user base. At a peak time in the beginning of February, 2024 there were more than 7.5 million users online on the relays. It was only about 4 million in the end of 2023. Before you continue this journey into the hidden services read about information safety and be notified that this area of the internet is dangerous!

As a child in the ’90s I was fascinated by the internet. That tiny browser window in a flashing CRT display became a portal to an exciting world. Not much later, in the early 2000s I realized that the online land of possibilities has another side. The hidden part of the internet is protected by a chain of relays and a tool that is specially developed to reach this area. No ordinary web browser can surf this web, nor the search engines like Google can index and show them in search results. The Tor hidden services was all over in the news in the 2010s because of its dark and lawless side. The Silk Road was taken down by the authorities in October 2013. Ross Ulbricht, the alleged founder and operator of the Silk Road, was arrested and later convicted on multiple charges. The case drew significant attention due to its connection to the dark web and the use of cryptocurrency (particularly Bitcoin) for transactions on the platform. The hidden services and the onion routing was developed for a very different purpose: to help people stay anonymous from governments, dictatorship and to help whistleblowers, journalists and the free speech.