What is The Dark Web and Why Should I Care?

November 2, 2020

What is the Dark Web?

The Dark Web is essentially the world wide web that exists on darknets. This ‘underground’ web is often where illegal activity takes place such as illegal trade, media, forums, terrorism, child pornography etc. Your average person cannot access the dark web, it requires specific software to enter and participate in Dark Web activity.

Why Should I Worry About the Dark Web?

Ever wonder how spam and junk emails know your name, usernames, passwords, or other information?

Oftentimes when a company’s database gets breached, client information is stolen and sold over the Dark Web. Scammers then buy and trade that information to send threats or demand money from the original clients of those companies.

If you participate in online shopping, sign up for a membership card, or create any other account, you are giving personal information to a business or company. This includes giving your name, password, email, phone number, birthday perhaps, or any other personal information. When a business or company gets hacked, which is extremely common, your information could get compromised. 

So, for example if you ever receive weird suspicious emails, your email address could have been leaked from a business or company breach, it would probably have gone through the dark web and was sold to the email scammer who is contacting you. 

This becomes quite dangerous as these cybercriminals collect information about you and then use that to potentially threaten you for money, ask you to perform illegal tasks, or blackmail you.

What Can I Do?

An important thing to always practice is good password management which means using strong and unique passwords for each system or account. We highly recommend password management tools such as Lastpass which helps keep all of your passwords organized and generates new passwords when you need one. 

Another way you can ensure your information isn’t being traded on the Dark Web is through our services! For members who have our cyber protect plan, we have 24/7 Dark Web monitoring and if anything suspicious pops up, our team will notify you right away.

Unsure if Dark Web monitoring is worth it? Try out our one-time FREE Dark Web scan to see for yourself!

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