I see quite a few posts on this subreddit about people questioning weather or not they should explore the scary dark web. Here is my review.

Is the dark web safe? That depends entirely on your own common sense.

It’s the digital equivalent of wandering into an unlit alley at 3:00 AM. Most sane people stay out. If you decide to stroll down it anyway, whatever happens next is on you.

The aesthetic itself feels like the movie The Backrooms, empty, disjointed, borderline surreal, and full of weird dead-ends that make you wonder why you came here in the first place.

Half the people downloading Tor are driven by sheer, unadulterated paranoia. They genuinely believe a fed at a desk is assigned specifically to monitor Larry watching doomsday prepper tutorials on YouTube, or Kyle googling basic Python exploits on Reddit. The government collects metadata in bulk, sure, but nobody is dedicating field agents to your boring late-night Amazon searches. Not that I personally care about the government watching me buy something on Amazon. I am sure that people will argue against this and try to convince you that it comes down to privacy which I don't find to be a compelling enough argument in most cases.

Then you have the aspiring digital kingpins. These are the self-styled hackers idling in onion chatrooms, flexing about running a basic port scan like they just penetrated NORAD. I kid you not I was in a chatroom the other day and someone was claiming they were close to hacking JP Morgan. Nine out of ten are edgelords furiously competing for the attention of a screen name like BustyGirl_xx who is, without question, a 54-year-old guy named Moe typing from a recliner.

Beyond that circus, you have the actual illicit underbelly: narcotics, stolen credentials, CSAM, and outright contraband, alongside niche weirdos congregating around things that technically aren't crimes yet, but definitely should disqualify you from public office. If you aren't hunting for that garbage, you aren't going to get in trouble.

The day-to-day reality of Tor isn't a slick movie montage; it's a BOG. Speeds crawl, half the links are dead, and the pages look like they were built on Geocities in 1999. (If you don't know what I mean by this then certainly look it up) Unless you're a whistleblower leaking classified files, a journalist evading censors in Belarus, or an actual criminal, there’s no real utility here. If you just want standard privacy, buy a decent VPN and save yourself the headache. If you are considering a VPN, I would suggest MULLVAD. Again, only consider a VPN if you want privacy against your ISP. If you want total anonymity then skip TOR and move to Yellowstone and live off the grid.

That said, if you’re just genuinely curious like I was, go ahead, download it, and poke around for an hour. You'll form your own opinion quickly, mostly that it's vastly overhyped and boring.

I did some research, some say's its not safe to use some say's its safe. i just want to read some historical documents that doesn't show on a regular browser

Hello, i want to know if there is any way to disarm/disable/pause fortinet when i do not own the device nor have approved access to it. I want to this because my school has blocked chatGPT through fortinet even though they block it with linewize. i would like to use chatGPT to do my Fusion 360 projects (works surprisingly well).

I have experimented with tailsOS on my usb and using a tor bridge i can access whatever i want (insta, tiktok, snap etc) websites that are usually blocked at school. Im wondering if i can implement that tor bridge to a linux distro thats ubuntu or debian based and be able to open desktop apps that fortinet otherwise blocks.

Tailscale and proton both work very rarely and inconsistently

I have already jailbroken my school laptop with a regular windows 11, school windows 11 and a fedora triple boot set up (not the point but might help)

i need to find a way around the wifi restrictions and i cannot rely heavily on vpns due to fortinet blocking most of them. And yes the easiest solution is to hotspot but i would love to find a way around it.

Please let me know if theres anything i can actually do about fortinet or please tell me if its not possible so i dont do anything too illegal

Thanks!

I just get many warnings that there is a virus on my laptop when I'm using it normally. Is the virus also on my laptop when tails is used? Am I fucked?

Sorry I dont know much about computers and IT. Im kinda scared. I haven't opened my laptop since my friend used it.

I just tested and Tor Browser seems to connect to https://dv-g3b-emudhra.we-have-a-problem.com/. If that's the case then its extremely bad because any Tor exit node could currently be intercepting traffic using the leaked certificates (see https://emudhra.we-have-a-problem.com/). Should users be completely avoiding using Tor Browser until that is resolved?

My relay is getting pounded by an attack. Consistent 6MB/s download, 120MB/s upload.

Any known mitigation?

This seems to log it, but not block it: https://github.com/YankoNach/tor-begindir-sentinel

EDIT related thread: https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-relays-how-is-this-attack-causing-900-mbps-download-and-100-mbps-upload/22099

TLDR: on Oct 2, 333 exits (~10% of Tor exits) started redirecting port 22 to 12 interception servers running a paramiko-based MITM that stole passwords and tried to drop Ebury on the target.

I hope you find it interesting :)

Hey, I'm having a doubt on accessing the darkweb which is by using VMware.

My thinking is I install VMware in my windows laptop and in that I install TailOS and use it to open darkweb. So, is it a good approach doing like that did I get full anonymity and is it even possible tell me your thoughts.

Hello friends! I’ve been wondering: is it possible to achieve significantly better anonymity by using Tails? You don’t need a VPN or a virtual machine—just a flash drive (at least 8GB) and a bit of time for installation and setup. What do you think?

Hey! So sorry if this post is a little dumb, it's been over a year now since I was really into this kind of thing and its pretty much left my head. During that time I downloaded the snowflake plugin and have just had it running ever since.

I'd normally get max 30 people using it, but today its gone up to around 300 (still increasing as I type this). I'm curious as to why this happened so randomly. One thing I did notice is that for a lot of these connections, they only lasted a few seconds. There have been a fair handful where they're connected for a reasonable amount of time but its definitely not the majority

Hey im having a doubt just a casual doubt, accessing dark web in mobile is same?

I mean which is better for browsing the darkweb and what precautions do I have to take to access the darkweb in mobile and laptop.

Recently, the TSPU has been actively blocking the handshake characteristic of obfs4 and Snowflake:
“According to data from the Tor Project forum, ‘most connections via obfs4 bridges are blocked by most DPI-enabled providers.’ The blocking mechanism is often related to the fact that obfs4 does not add padding, and the TSPU can ‘spot’ it by characteristic packet sizes or traffic patterns.”
“The TSPU began detecting and filtering DTLS ClientHello messages with certain fingerprints (JA3/JA4), as a result of which the success rate of Snowflake connections fell from almost 100% to almost complete failure.”
So I recommend either using packet fragmenters like ByeDPI or a Tor-based proxy/VPN with a built-in obfuscator, for example OrBot. Unfortunately, although this workaround is free and fairly reliable, it does not protect you from whitelists, and it is also quite slow. If anyone knows, please share faster methods that you use.

Usually a bridge used to work, but recently the network can tell with a bridge anyway. Doesn’t work with tails either. Anyone know a fix?

Hello guys
I'm working deep research with tor softwares and I need a guide

Can you help me

Hey, I'm a Student and I am Curious about Darkweb after my Friend told me a lot about it that when he entered the Darkweb, his Location was tracked by the Darkweb locals and he is also saying me to not do so.

Should I open it using tor browser or my location will be tracked?

Does anyone know if this hat is embroidered? I really want to get the hat if its of good quality. Otherwise I'll just go for the hoodie.

If you have the hat yourself [or the hoodie too I suppose] and are willing to share a photo and tell me about its quality id be very grateful.

Using Tor browser 15.025 when I go to https://bridges.torproject.org/ to obtain a obfs4 bridge I get the following error. Can anyone explain?

2026-10-17 03:26:20.018

[NOTICE] Bridge at 'x.x.x.x:1440' isn't reachable by our firewall policy. Asking bridge authority instead.

2026-10-17 03:26:52.032

[NOTICE] Tried to fetch a descriptor directly from a bridge, but that bridge is not reachable through our firewall.

Hi,

I'm running a tor middle relay for quite some time, like over a year.. my home fiber connection is a bit overprovisioned and i don't know what to do with all the bandwidth..

Since day 2 or so, i can't login to my online banking anymore. I have to spin up some vpn or use my phones cellular connection. I guess running a middle relay brings my public (dynamic) IPv4 on some blocklist. As soon as i change the network, it instantly works. No, i don't wanna do my banking over TOR. its my normal home internet fiber connection, which also hosts a tor-relay.

Anyone experienced that? Every other service still works fine, like my credit card (different bank), paypal. It's ING Diba bank in germany btw.

Why am I leaking DNS?(Ik this is a very stupid question but I am a little bit lost LOL)

This is a new alpha release, not an update to the stable version discussed earlier this week.

Changes include:

Firefox and GeckoView updated to 153.5.0esr.

Tor updated to 0.4.9.14.

NoScript updated to 13.6.36.90201984.

Additional Firefox security fixes backported from version 158.

The release also includes build-system changes and an update to Lyrebird 0.9.0.

Alpha releases allow developers and testers to identify problems before changes reach the stable browser.

However, the Tor Project explicitly warns that alpha versions may contain bugs affecting privacy, security, or usability.

People who depend on strong anonymity should continue using stable Tor Browser 15.0.25, rather than switching to the alpha simply because its version number is higher.

So if Tor or similar browsers like mullvad browser or brave had this feature it would be gold.

You just turn it on and as soon as a file is selected for upload the browser makes a temporary copy but strips the metadata and uploads that, then deletes the temporary copy on your device.

I think my biggest contribution to the Tor network isn't even the Snowflake itself, but the node that I run.

Orbot has been around forever. I was just wondering if anyone here has used it before? I never hear anyone talk about it. For good or bad.

First of all I want to state that I don't want to cause FUD or anything.

So I know Tor and Tor Browser get security fixes all the time which is just how it goes I suppose. I use Tor Browser for my safety and over the years I've updated Tor Browser many times. I make sure to do it without undue delay because I'm anxious about being hacked, doxed, bullied. I even changed about:config trying to get more frequent update checks after noticing a Tor Browser update would release on the dist site but I'd only get the update notifications 6 hours later. Sometimes the change log says everyone should update asap so I take that seriously.

Two days ago Tor Browser 15.0.25 released, one of the changes is it updated to Tor 0.4.9.14 which released four days prior. Tor 0.4.9.14 released with high severity security fixes and in the change log they make to point out that everyone is affected equally, so like relays, clients, directory authorities and stuff. Clients is Tor Browser. So there was a four day window where Tor Browser with the latest Tor just wasn't a thing and there was no update for me to do to stay safe.

I just want someone to tell me if I'm missing something. This isn't the first time this happened so it's intended this way. Like I don't know if Tor Browser is just a meme. I don't want to be the stupid one out who doesn't get the memo. Should I stop relying on Tor Browser and look for a different way to meet my security needs? Sometimes I feel using Tor Browser is making my security worse. I know I'm in the minority of the normal Tor users which is a burden. I feel quite alone in using Tor for its intended purpose (protecting yourself from injustice). I thought this could have been brought up by somebody a long time ago but nobody seems to care.

Edit: I reread my post and I'm sorry I have a hard time keeping emotions out of my posts. I just want to know how the community, or possibly the Tor team if they ever made a formal/informal statement, justifies Tor Browser to lag behind in security updates.