Darknet (“darknet”) literally translated from English means “dark network”, that is, that part of the World Wide Web that is hidden from the eyes of uninformed users. The opportunities provided are used by scammers of various kinds, primarily “working” with bank cards, as well as sellers of child pornography, drugs, weapons. And unlike the “deep Internet” (or “deepnet”), where pages are not indexed by online search engines like Yandex or Google, but they can be accessed via a direct link, the “darknet” cannot be accessed through a regular browser – Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome.
However, the “darknet” itself is not good and not bad, says Alexander Vurasko, an official representative of the department “K” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, which specializes in combating cybercrime. It includes a bunch of different protocols and routing systems, as well as tools that allow you to hide your IP address, the real location of the server. In a broad sense, these are the technologies that make it difficult to geographically link any resource or user.
The oldest “shadow” network — Freenet — has existed since 2000.
Its goal was to provide users with a platform to express absolute freedom of speech without fear of consequences. Freenet has remained a kind of “hyde park” online.
In 2003, I2P appeared (an abbreviation from the English invisibleinternetproject — the Invisible Internet project). Its official goals are also quite “robingudian”: ensuring freedom of speech and the press, countering political censorship, illegal collection of personal data by government and commercial organizations, ensuring anonymity in the information space, promoting non-commercial information exchange. In practice, this translates into a discussion of how best to evade taxes. There is also a cryptocurrency exchange on I2P.
