The Dark Web: An invisible weapon

Today we all find ourselves dealing with a global pandemic, not only is that a scary thought but we have the extra worry of knowing fraudsters have ramped up their efforts to steal and sell our identities on the dark web.

Following on from our recent article; The Dark Web: Is my data out there? I want to bring to your attention Fraud Web, our latest product designed to search the dark web in real-time for your customer’s identity information.

Our Fraud Web tool is focused on the Dark Web, which is a hidden portion of the internet that can only be accessed using special software. It is associated with illegal activity. The dark web refers to all those websites that are not found in your regular Google, Safari, or any other internet search. It is the part of the internet that it is not visible to search engines.

The Dark web protects its anonymous visitors, making it really difficult to be traced. In order to be accessed, users utilize The Onion Router (TOR), which makes both the information distributor and its receiver difficult to trace. Around 2.5 million people use TOR every day. It is used for many different purposes, many use this network simply to send their data and protect their privacy. Using TOR is not a crime.

The Dark Web is used to trade with drugs, weapons, explosives, child pornography, and data. A place which is full of information for cybercriminals to use and profit from.

Every day in this black market we find stolen credit cards, malicious software, counterfeit documents, phone numbers, social media accounts, email addresses, or work histories. On the TOR browser, the connection requests are re-routed several times before reaching their destination. For example, if a user in Singapore is trying to connect to a website in London, that request on a TOR browser could be routed from Singapore to New York to Sydney to Capetown to, finally, London.

The lockdown due to Coronavirus has increased the number of visits to the Dark Web, where it is known that there is a large amount of our personal data being sold in the black markets every minute.

We must be extremely careful and distrust any initiative that comes from unknown sources, even messages that come to us with a known appearance. Domains should always be checked thoroughly in avoidance of fraud. It is also important to be careful with the apps that are downloaded onto our phones and laptops as they can carry viruses that steal our personal information.

It seems to be clear that the Dark Web is something we need to be concerned about and careful with, yet not many companies take the necessary steps towards protecting their services.

How can we help?

We invite you to take a further look into FraudWeb and speak with us about how we can help you to search and monitor the PII, personal identifiable information of your consumers with the option of ongoing monitoring updated every 24 hours. Be at peace. Be safe. Invest in fraud prevention. Stay ahead of the curve.