How to create an anonymous e-mail. Temporary mail Anonymous email

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. Why and when might temporary mail be needed?

Well, for example, on the Internet, most online services and sites that require registration (forums, blogs, social networks, various communities, etc.) as a personal identifier still require you to specify an Email address (usually at they send him a letter with a link or code to confirm that he belongs to you).

Is the situation familiar? Many people indicate their main mailbox when registering, and then are forced (as, for example, I do) to sort through tons in search of something important among it. Someone starts for registration, which is a good solution.

But you can also use the services of temporary e-mail, to receive a mailbox in which no need to waste time on this. This is especially true if you are forced to register anywhere on the network, when you do not plan to use the created account in the future.

This business may look like a mirror to the main Email address or like independent mailboxes, but working for a limited time (for example, there is a temporary mail for ten minutes, several hours or several days).

10 services for creating temporary Email addresses

In fact, disposable mail can be used in dozens of other cases, for example, when you want to send a message to someone anonymously. Or during some kind of Internet voting, when in order to avoid cheating there is a link to a mailbox, and here disposable mail will come in handy (for those who want to bypass this restriction).

Let's move straight from theory to practice and see how it all actually works. Let’s touch it and draw conclusions about whether it’s worth it and what exactly makes sense to adopt.

Temp-Mail.org- anonymous disposable mail. A temporary email address is generated automatically when you go to the main page of this service. You can see it and copy it in the upper left part of the page.
The interface is Russian-language and intuitive (more similar to an email service than others). If you don’t like the default mailbox option, you can choose the name and domain zone for it yourself by clicking on the “Change” button from the left menu.
The received email lasts for about an hour. If you no longer need the box, you can delete it.
They also have browser plugins for Chrome/Opera and an Android application.
Discard Email— a one-time Email service that allows you to choose not only any name for the mailbox, but also select a domain (what comes after) from a dozen options.
Although the service is bourgeois, it has the ability to switch to a Russian interface. As far as I understand, mail is stored in it for up to 30 days, and files up to ten megabytes in size can be attached to incoming letters.
Tempmail.io— offers to create a mailbox by automatically generating an address, or choosing the name of your future mailbox.
The service allows you to select a domain from a list; domains are regularly added and updated. The service supports a Russian-language interface. Letters are stored for 60 minutes, and the mailbox itself lives until the session changes or you delete it.
DropMail.me— one of the most serious and functional temporary mail services. There are essentially no time limits, but if you reload the page, a new one-time Email will open. However, a “Restore access” button has appeared for logging into previously created mailboxes.
You can also configure the forwarding of correspondence to your main Email so that you always have access to correspondence received in this one-time mailbox. If you wish, you can create a new mailbox with the name you need and the ability to choose one of three domain zones. Overall, amazing service.
GetAirMail— after clicking on the “Get Temporary Email” button, your temporary (for the next 24 hours) Email address will be automatically generated, which you can copy at the top of the page that opens. And just below, the contents of this box will be checked at ten-second intervals. Actually, that's all.
Guerrillamail— not a very user-friendly interface, but you can get used to it. The name for the mailbox is generated automatically, but you can change it to your own and select the appropriate domain, i.e. the ending of the email that comes after the @.
Incognito Mail- by going to this URL you will need to come up with a login (or get a generated version) and become a “caliph for an hour” with a temporary mailbox like [email protected] and a lifetime of just one hour (you can, if necessary, extend it to a full hour ). At the same time, it is possible to respond to incoming letters, which may be important for some.
MailForSpam— from the name it is obvious that this mail is intended for receiving spam. She, so to speak, is ready to take the fire upon herself, especially since this is not very expensive for the owners, because letters are stored there for a very limited time and are deleted as needed for free space on the server (this can happen several times a day or just once per month).
The interface, by the way, can be switched to Russian, but even without this, in my opinion, it is the height of brevity. Just enter your desired login and click on “Login” to view your incoming emails. What could be simpler?
MailInator— no more than ten messages (each weighing no more than 120 KB) can be stored in this temporary mailbox at a time, and all existing attachments to letters are deleted. To start working with it, just enter the desired mailbox name and click on the “Check it” button:
As a result, a page with the contents of your new Email will open, where incoming letters will be stored for several hours. You can view them and write a response if you wish.
MinteMail- a fairly simple service where you don’t even need to enter anything. Immediately after clicking on the specified link, you will see an automatically generated temporary Email in the upper right corner. Copy it, and without closing the page, register (or why else did you need a temporary anonymous email address with a lifetime of three hours) so that after waiting a little you will see the message that has arrived there.

8 free one-time anonymous mail services

3 temporary mail services with recipient substitution

Well, in conclusion, I would like to give a few more examples of services that allow you to replace the contents of the fields of the recipient or the email address from which the message is sent. It’s difficult for me to immediately imagine situations when this might be needed, but at least you will know where to look if such a situation suddenly arises (you can add this publication to your browser bookmarks just in case - I added it).

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site

Creating a one-time email

To quickly send an anonymous letter, you can use a disposable email address. As a rule, such boxes are removed within a few minutes. Temporary e-mail services are provided by many services, for example 10minutemail.com, fakemailgenerator.com, trash-mail.com.

Addresses are generated randomly, after which you get access to your mailbox. You won't need to provide any personal information, but the messages themselves are not encrypted, only traceable to IP address. Also note that, in theory, these emails are accessible to everyone, since no password is required to log in.

Many Internet services and applications force you to register using mail. It’s not necessary to compromise your address and then deal with endless spam.

Previously, it was possible to create a new email account on Yandex or Mail.ru every time. Now the procedure has become a little longer, and many resources do not work with Russian domains.

You can use one of the services to quickly create a temporary address - register and forget.

1. Mailinator

The service allows you to create free web addresses that are generated when you receive messages. The principle of operation is incredibly simple - enter any word into the main window and press “GO”.

The service generates two addresses that can be used to register on other resources. And a complete list of all letters received at the address during the day.

After a day, the mail and virtual address are deleted. By the way, registration is not required in Mailinator itself.

Unfortunately, it only offers one domain with its own name.

Anonymous email service with a large selection of domains. The operating principle is standard - come up with a name and click “Create”.

Inboxes are stored in a general mailbox or on a page like http://www.yopmail.com?name-of-your-mailbox/

Letters are stored for up to 8 days, but it is possible to delete them yourself. There is a full Russian version.

3.Hide My Ass!

Free anonymous mailbox that can be used to receive email. Requires registration without entering personal and real data: just come up with an address name and password.

You can enable notifications about the arrival of new emails that are sent to your real mailbox, or even set a time for this account to “self-destruct.”

4. Crazy Mail

Unlike competitors, it allows you to not only receive, but also send letters. The mailbox lives for 10 minutes, the maximum message size is 10 MB, and the largest number of recipients is 3.

To combat spam, it adds a header with your external IP address to the letter. That is, the provider’s address is not suitable for secret correspondence.

And for a one-time registration on an unimportant resource, this is what you need. Moreover, Crazy Mail There is an excellent Chorom extension.

5. “Anonymizer” Mail.ru

Allows you to create anonymous addresses for any mail accounts on Mail.ru.

All letters sent to an anonymous address will be delivered to the main mailbox (the main address is not visible to the sender). You can write letters from your main mailbox, but send them on behalf of an anonymous recipient.

If necessary, you can create several addresses to choose from and get rid of it at any time.

In addition to the standard set of options (automatic account creation upon receipt of a letter), it offers its users automatic confirmation of links.

This will be a particularly useful feature for those who often register with various web services.

NotSharingMy.Info will provide you with a permanent, anonymous email address to receive emails without you having to provide your personal information.

The only thing you need to enter to register is your real email address. All anonymous messages received are automatically saved in your current email.

Which service should you choose?

It is quite difficult to single out a specific leader from the described services. Each has its own advantages that you need to evaluate yourself. Sometimes it is impossible to single out one universal one. For example, I use

“Anonymizer” for registration on resources that involve a possible exchange of correspondence,
Crazy Mail extension for Google Chrome if you need quick registration,
Mailinator for testing and surfing.

What anonymous email address services do you use?

For some of us, remaining anonymous online is very important. But almost any service requires registration and the first three login options are using existing Google, Facebook or accounts. Others - like Google - expect you to share a number and another email address to sign up.

What if you want to create an email address that is completely private and anonymous, with no obvious connection?

This goes beyond just encrypting messages. Anyone can do this, for example, based on Gmail, using the Secure Mail by Streak browser extension. For desktop email clients GnuPG (Privacy Guard) or Enigmail.

But all these services do not hide the sender of the message.

How to make completely anonymous email?

First step:surf the Internet anonymously

The browser's incognito mode/private mode can't do too much - sites will still record the IP address, for example.

If you want to browse the web anonymously (and create an email), try Browser Tor, a Mozilla-based browser from the Project. All the traffic you send on the Internet hops through so many servers that the people on the other end have no way of knowing where you really are. It will take more time than working with or, but that's the price of vigilance.

Tor Browser is available in 15 languages for Windows, Mac OS and Linux. It is self-contained and portable, i.e. You can run it from a flash drive if you don't want to install it directly. And it's completely free. Even Facebook has a Tor-secure address to protect users' location and allows users to access in places where it is prohibited. For example, China.

But don't think that Tor is completely perfect and you will be 1000 percent anonymous.

Anonymous email

Temp-Mail.org - anonymous temporary mail. The service is absolutely free and provides a one-time email box for receiving mail. The address is created immediately after opening the page.

Among the features:

The mailbox lifetime is not limited; received E-mails are stored for 1 hour.
Large selection of domains and their regular updating.
You can manually change the address by clicking the "Change" button.
The box can be deleted at any time, erasing all traces of activity.
You can use the API to automate work with temporary mail.

In addition, you can download plugins for Chrome/Opera and Android/iOS applications.

A relatively anonymous Gmail account. This means creating a full Google account, but without showing Google your real name, real location, real birthday, or any other information during the registration process (using the Tor browser, of course).

You will eventually have to provide information such as a third-party email address or phone number. On the phone side, you can use apps like Hushed or Burner.

Regarding the third-party email address, there are anonymous email services.

Note that you must also use an email service that supports Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, . This is a cryptographic protocol that allows for more secure communications to prevent accidental surveillance, such as when shopping on Amazon. If you see HTTP S in the URL, and not just HTTP, then this just indicates encryption. Or a padlock symbol appears in the address bar. The three major email providers (Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Outlook.com) all support HTTPS. Install the extension for Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Android to ensure that sites use the protocol by default.

This is great for web surfing, but HTTPS alone is not enough for email.

An email alias (such as This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it) is certainly not enough. Just one login without using Tor will mean that your real IP address will be determined, and this is enough to find you.

What anonymous services can you use to send messages?

easy to use, has built-in encryption between participants. To get all the goodies, you'll have to pay for it, starting at $34.99 per year for 1GB of online storage. (There is a free version with 25MB of storage, but you will need to log in at least every three weeks). For businesses, the cost is $5.24 per user per month and they get their own domain name. There is a free trial so you can try HushMail for yourself.

Please note that Hushmail cannot be used for "illegal activities".

Hide My Ass runs on a VPN server, allowing users to access content blocked in their country/office, not to mention providing a much higher level of privacy (hence the name). The base price is $11.52 per month, but if you pay for multiple months at once, the price will be less.

The postal service is an add-on that comes with the NMA, it is available to everyone, there is no need to pay for VPN services. You receive an address @hmamail.com, which can be valid for 24 hours, a week, a month, 6 or 12 months.

HMA also has iOS and Android programs and apps that provide secure mobile connections, plus private Chat and SMS messaging with other HMA users.

Guerrilla Mail provides one-time, temporary email. Technically, the address will exist forever and will never be used again. Any messages received at the address available at guerrillamail.com are valid for one hour only. GuerrillaMail is the perfect way to create an email to create another, more permanent, but anonymous email address. Or quickly send anonymous letters - no registration required. You can even attach a file if it's smaller than 150MB, or use it to send someone your extra bitcoins. Combined with the Tor Browser, you're virtually invisible.

Mailinator, a free one-time email service, has a clean interface, but you probably don't even need it. Whenever you are asked for an email, just make up a name and end it with @mailinator.com. Then go to the site, enter the name, and you will see if there are any messages. No registration is required, although you can sign in with a Google account.

The only problem is that if someone logs in under the same name, then both of you will have access to the received messages. There are no passwords. There is no possibility to send messages. The service is good for speed, since there is no registration, and only with the most confusing, unclear name you can come up with.

Leave your comment!

The Hacker editors had at their disposal a database of more than eight thousand links to sites on the darknet. This is a nearly complete registry of working open resources available on Tor Hidden Services. We have selected the most interesting ones to tell our readers about them.

WARNING

Carders' forum, a collection of photographs of women crushing animals with their heels, a mirror of the Russian Counter-Strike forum, women with marijuana leaves and buds in their intimate places, someone's file dump with a bunch of books and a binder of old issues of "Hacker", a forum for gun lovers, photographs pissing women, an archive of books in Chinese, a forum for men interested in penis enlargement, and, of course, drugs in all types, forms and states of aggregation. All this can be seen in less than ten minutes of exploring the dark side of the web.

It's not so easy to dig something out of this pile of garbage. We automatically followed all the links, and out of eight thousand pages, only 4,300 were opened. About a thousand sites immediately require authorization or show a login form without any explanation - you can’t get there on a crooked goat. There are also a lot of empty pages, pages with the default response from the web server, as well as various mirrors, clones and stubs. In general, even if we take into account that some potentially useful sites are not available 100% of the time and simply did not make it into our database, in general there are not so many live resources collected - maybe a couple of thousand.

Using Tor from Python

Requesting pages from your scripts via Tor is not much more difficult than from the regular Internet. All you need is a local Tor node (just open Tor Browser), Python and the . Here is a script that downloads the main page of The Pirate Bay via Tor and displays its contents. You'll probably figure out how to download something else.

Import socks, socket, urllib url = "http://hss3uro2hsxfogfq.onion" def create_connection(address, timeout=None, source_address=None): sock = socks.socksocket() sock.connect(address) return sock socks.setdefaultproxy( socks.PROXY_TYPE_SOCKS5, "127.0.0.1", 9150, True) socket.socket = socks.socksocket socket.create_connection = create_connection contents = urllib.urlopen(url).read() print contents

What are these resources? After preliminary sorting, it turned out that the set of topics was extremely narrow. A significant part of the sites are shops and trading platforms, designed in the form of forums or auctions in the style of eBay. Drugs, weapons, fake documents, stolen goods, credit cards, exploits, botnets - all this can be found in abundance on virtual junkyards. We'll talk more about specific examples later.

This category also includes sites that offer various services - from bitcoin laundering to contract killings. And if the first sounds plausible, then the second is probably a hoax. Fraud, consider it, is adjacent to the store segment, making it even larger.

Another large segment is various kinds of pornography. From delights like those listed at the beginning of the article, to the usual variety, which is abundant on the open Internet.

Actually, a considerable share of resources raises the question: why was it hidden in .onion? Libertarian blogs, hacker manifestos, home pages... It often feels like someone just wanted to show off or practice hosting a site in a fashionable way. Such resources disappear one after another - their owners quickly realize that maintaining a server is expensive, and there is no point in it.

Search and directories

The first thing you want to provide yourself with when you find yourself on an alternative version of the Internet is a search engine. There seem to be no problems here: there are Torch, Grams, not Evil, Fess, Candle, Ahima, and maybe a couple of lesser-known attempts to repeat Google’s success on the dark web.

We will not undertake to compare search engines, objectively assessing the quality of the results: this requires cunning metrics and techniques that we do not have. Based on purely subjective feelings, Grams has seriously spammy results, while Evil and Torch poorly sort the results: completely random garbage may appear at the top instead of large sites. This is not always a drawback (garbage can be interesting too), but in the end we found Fess the most enjoyable.

But in the case of the dark web, searching a la Google is not nearly as cool and universal a solution as on the regular Internet. Firstly, the most interesting things are hidden on forums, which often require authorization, and search engines are overwhelmed. Secondly, there are so few resources in general that the search loses all meaning: for different requests you will come across the same sites plus a variety of garbage that is not relevant to the matter. Well, this is not to mention the fact that on the dark web search engines have little chance of tracking user behavior through analogues of Google Analytics and AdWords in order to improve the quality of results.

The solution to the problem on the regular Internet was found even before the advent of modern search engines and looks like a catalog of useful links. In a sense, this article is just such a directory, we just selected the most interesting resources alive at the moment, and also, of course, we do not make money by posting links.

The situation with popular directories on the dark web is different: on the well-known Hidden Wiki, a significant part of the links do not open at all, and the prioritization and selection principle raises serious questions for the resource owners. There is also Onion URL Repository, OnionDir, Yet another Tor Directory, TorLinks, HD Wiki, the Russian “Godnotaba” (by the way, it’s really quite good, albeit small) and hundreds of other collections - large and small, curated and not very curated, posted both in the dark web, as well as on the regular, light Internet.

Mail

A completely anonymized mailbox is a useful thing, and, of course, such services exist. But you understand that the demand here is very specific: not only hackers, spies, political dissidents and informants want to send letters and leave no traces, but also spammers, extortionists, bots and other lovers of automation of all stripes. This imposes a lot of restrictions.

The most popular mailer that works through Tor is called Sigaint. Its logo is an eye with menacing bloody drops underneath it. “Blood from the eyes” is a very accurate metaphor in this case. The interface is straight out of the nineties, an eye-catching palette, advertising stuffed here and there, an evil captcha (you need to enter it both when logging in and when sending a letter), a limit on the size of the mailbox - 50 MB, problems with Russian encoding when sending letters... In short , user experience is about the level of medieval torture.

Alternatives to Sigaint seem to exist, but they are either paid (for example, Lenatos costs 0.016 BTC for six months, AnonInbox - 0.1 BTC per year), or send letters only to other addresses in Tor. The second group includes, for example, TorBox and Mail2Tor. In order for a message sent from one of them to be delivered to regular mail on the clearnet, you will have to use a relay, and this is a separate headache.

There is a whole class of servers based on open source OnionMail. If you master the setup, you can connect to one of them through a regular mailer (via POP3 and SMTP). For example, Thunderbird with the TorBirdy plugin is suitable. Find the current list of servers in the Servers section on the OnionMail website. If you use Linux (preferably Tails), then the onion.py script will help ease the setup.

Hosting

The early Internet was different in that those who wanted to open their own website had a lot of opportunities to do it for pennies or for free - in exchange for a banner or at least a link to the hoster. The situation in Onion is different: free hosting has not caught on, and paid hosting does not look very attractive.

The reason for this is simple: mainly drug dealers and other bandits are willing to pay for hosting, which can only be accessed via Tor. If you are not planning to join them, you can easily set up a server at home, or find a hosting provider who will not be outraged if you run Tor on their server. Even for criminal activity, they often resort to the services of so-called bulletproof hosters, which also work with clearnet.

But since we’re talking about hosting on the darknet, let’s give a couple of examples. Hidden Host promises 20 GB of space and unlimited traffic for 0.1 BTC per year; costs 0.25 BTC per year and gives only 256 MB of space and 1 TB of traffic; Kowloon Hosting Services has flexible pricing - from 0.04 BTC per month for 256 MB to 0.8 BTC for six months and 2 GB.

By the way, Kowloon (pronounced “Kowloon” or “Kowloon”. This, by the way, is a terribly overpopulated part of Hong Kong) has a free trial plan. If you write a letter with the subject TRIAL domain_name to a special mail, then in response you will receive the data necessary for access. That is why, apparently, during our impromptu indexing of the dark web, we found about six hundred links to empty default pages hosted by Kowloon.

Sharing

If free hosting in Onion is tight, then there are plenty of places where you can temporarily host a file, picture or piece of text. For files smaller than 500 KB there is PopFiles, you can upload the picture to a site with the simple name Image Hosting, text - to CrypTor, ZeroBin or Pasta.

Any of them allows you to set a timer by which information will be erased. Stronghold Paste has a section with archives - you can ask what kind of nonsense they post there. To prevent your data from being included in this list, do not forget to check the Private box. Please note that Pasta has a text size limit of as much as 10 MB. If you wish, you can easily post a file encoded in Base64 here.

Torrents

What usually hides in the dark corners of the Internet besides drugs and naked pussies? Of course, warez! Nowadays, however, there is no special fun here: there is a mirror The Pirate Bay, and it generally covers most of the pirate needs. RuTracker does not have a separate service in Onion (Tor already allows you to access RuTracker.org bypassing the blocking), but Rutor does have one. You can also look at “Buried” - this site is an order of magnitude smaller (1.6 million hands versus 25 million for Rutor), but an extra chance to find something rare won’t hurt.

Books

For book lovers, the dark web also has everything you need - first of all, it’s “Flibusta” and an excellent search engine for the “Traum library” called “Verbal Hero”. You can look for English and German books in a place with the pretentious name Imperial Library of Trantor, but new arrivals are a bit slow there. There is also Caliber, although the database of 1600 books is somehow not very serious. You can delve into the ruins of computer and educational literature in English at this link. And of course, the mirror of the pirated scientific work aggregator Sci-Hub (we already talked about it once) is seriously vying for a place in bookmarks.

Communication

Going to hiddenservices just to chat is definitely an acquired taste. There are enough resources on the regular Internet where you can register anonymously (or not register at all) and chat about whatever your heart desires. On “onion” sites they talk mainly about business. You probably already understand which ones.

There are not many places for free communication, but they exist. Until recently, the Onion had a mirror 2ch.hk - we provide a link in case it still comes to life. There are other imageboards: the foreign 8chan, famous in narrow circles, the Russian-language Neboard and Haibane.

Galaxy2 can be considered the main social network of Onion - if you dig around, you can find interesting thematic groups in it or meet interesting people. Those who prefer to communicate in Russian will be interested in the onelon resource. This is a rather unusual blogging platform with a small but vibrant community. Please note that to register you will need to create a PGP key for yourself (this, by the way, is a common phenomenon on the dark web).

The Hidden Answers website may also be helpful. This is something like Yahoo Answers or “[email protected]”, but with a focus on the darknet and related things. The main topics are the reliability of trading platforms, setting up Tor and, of course, searching for thematic resources. The latter makes Hidden Answers an interesting place to start surfing.

At least for show, it’s worth mentioning that Onion operates a Facebook mirror. For those living in Russia, it makes little sense, but, for example, Facebook is blocked in China, so accessing it through Tor is just fine.

Generally speaking, much of the correspondence on the dark side of the Internet occurs not on websites, but on Jabber and IRC. Selecting suitable clients, setting up an anonymous connection and searching for servers and groups is a topic for a separate article, so here we will limit ourselves to just a couple of links. TorXMPP, Cyruserv, securejabber.me - Jabber servers located in Onion; CgAn IRC and Volatile are IRC clients that can work directly in the Tor Browser; ChatTor is a primitive but convenient web chat with the ability to create your own rooms.

Well, if you suddenly become completely bored and have no one to talk to about the weather and the latest research on the darknet, then take a look at Chat with strangers - this is the local analogue of Chatroulette.

The shops

Stores and trading platforms seem to be the main use of Tor hidden services so far. Therefore, let’s look at them in a little more detail and (purely for research purposes) go through the main markets. In general, when you look through the lists of links, all these “acropolises”, “Alexandrias”, “oases”, “ghettos”, “shops”, “shops”, “shops”, “pharmacies” and other nooks and crannies make your head spin. The competition is enormous, and every shabby drug dealer is trying to get his way, playing out and figuring out how to stand out. What do you think of the name of the store “Shimmering Circus of Vengeance”? We liked it too - purely from a literary point of view.

AlphaBay

AlphaBay is one of the largest markets that divided the hidden market after the closure of the famous Silk Road. “Officially” it is believed that the site was “founded by a carder under the nickname alpha02, a well-known member of most carding forums and a well-known figure among advanced carders.” European researchers claim, however, that the market operates under the protection of the “Russian mafia,” since the servers are located in Russia and are administered from Russian IP addresses. (It would be nice, by the way, to come up with a catchier name for the “Russian mafia” like “Yakuza”!)

The mafia may be Russian, but the site is entirely English. Registration is free, but very complicated - with a couple of dozen fields. Trading, as in the vast majority of markets, is carried out in bitcoins. There is an escrow service. As buyers note, the site is promptly moderated, cleaning out spam and scam. However, judging by some sections filled with advertising and offers of intimate services, this is still not enough.

AlphaBay's biggest advantage is, of course, its range. The market contains 147 thousand offers in the Drugs & Chemicals section (offering, as expected, drugs and illegal drugs), 27 thousand in the Fraud section (database dumps and personal data are sold here) and 13 thousand in the Digital Products section (access to accounts, gaming keys and various software). The remaining sections also contain several thousand items: weapons, jewelry, carding, malware, hosting and other services. The Guides & Tutorials section is unexpectedly interesting, in which a wide variety of information is offered for sale: from harmless website directories or guides on “hacking Wi-Fi” to ready-made botnets, including lists of already existing bots, instructions for use and management software.

Dream Market

A market similar in functionality, quality and content to AlphaBay. Specializes in drugs and digital products. There are an order of magnitude fewer positions, but overall the range of products is the same. The market is unremarkable, except perhaps for an intriguing question: why does anyone use it if there are better markets?

We decided to show you this site for one reason: other English-language stores have an even more meager selection. In other words, if AlphaBay is “the best of the best,” then Dream Market is “the worst of the best,” a kind of “first step” in the quality of a typical hidden market.

Hydra

Hail Hydra! Oh, wait, that's not what we're talking about. Hydra calls itself an “anonymous marketplace,” but it’s essentially a social network for drug dealers. Specializes exclusively in drugs (amphetamine and its salts, cocaine and derivatives, exchange of bookmarks). At the same time, the owners are not shy about advertising even on the open Internet: the hydra.ooo website is on the first pages of Google, which is strange. Children's typos and frivolous emoticons also do not add trust.

The site is Russian-language, and judging by the comments in the code and the applications used, it was originally Russian. Registration is minimalistic (username and password) without any confirmation. There is a chat. Spam is not cleared: admins do not consider those who paid money for posting to be spammers, as reported on the first page. In addition to sections on selling, hiring and discussing sellers in different regions and countries, it has three interesting sections: “FAQULTET” (the topics of which reveal the details and secrets of the shadow drug business), “HYPERLAB” (recipes and methods for synthesizing drugs) and “WORK” ( scorching the hidden relationship of some seemingly legal professions with the world of drug trafficking).

T*chka

Another drug market, but unlike the others - with an ideology. “Tochka” (as the name suggests, the creator is Russian) was created a year and a half ago and positioned itself as the first drug market that controls the fairness and safety of the transaction: before “Tochka” in the English-language Onion the concept of “dead drop” (drop-off) was not widely used. The site administrator admitted that he is trying to put “honesty, security and tolerance in every way” into the market: this can be seen already during registration, in the warning about the ban on the distribution of low-quality and untested drugs, weapons, poisons, porn, extremist materials and discrimination based on race, politics or religion.

The interface can be selected in Russian, but the description of all offers is in English. As you can see in the screenshot, there are three orders of magnitude fewer offers than on AlphaBay, but the emphasis is on the “purity” and “quality” of the product. The product, by the way, is not always drugs - rare and expensive medicines, which in a number of countries cannot be obtained legally, documents and programs for falsification, and some hacker services are also sold on the market.

Forums

RAMP

Another Russian-language semi-forum-semi-market for drug dealers. There is no communication, discussion of hacking, security, cryptography, leaks, malware, carding, and so on is prohibited already during registration, during which you are required to pore over this list of prohibitions for two minutes. All activity on the site comes down to drug trafficking.

The Hub

A sad English-language forum about everything that is not allowed on the white fluffy Internet. The vast majority of comments are in the For Beginners, Darknet In General and Off Topic sections, which seems to hint at the quality of the audience and discussions. Doesn't work without JavaScript. The Vendors section contains dull attempts at self-promotion of a huge number of drug dealers and strained, monotonous reviews of various drug markets. God, how tiring this is.

Closed hacker forums and sites

Hacker threads can be found here and there, but specialized forums are mostly unfriendly, and even free registration is rare. For example, entry to Hell, one of the most famous forums, costs 0.1 BTC (about $60).

GroundZero, SiphON and BlackHat look open at first glance, but are suspiciously empty. There is no doubt that all the most interesting things are hidden in sections that are not visible to the average visitor.

When registering on most of these forums, they ask you to enter an invitation code, and even if you own it, it is not a fact that all threads will be immediately open to you. There are quite a few public sections on the 0day forum, but you can rest assured that the main movement here, too, happens in sections that you can’t get to from the street.

Very little remains in the public domain. The most popular topic is carding: bays, CVV, cashing out for various payment systems, ways to bypass antifraud, discussions about where to get dumps. In general, combat crobbers from Carder Planet will find it a little boring here, but if you are simply interested in the topic, you will definitely learn something new: read the FAQ and click on the links for beginners that the community generously shares.

As for the other sections in the public, it’s a real disappointment: the chance of finding 0day is generally lower than on clearnet. But you can look at the Accounts and Database Dumps section, sometimes you see familiar words like VK or Rambler.

Of course, hacker groups also have personal sites on the dark web. As an example, you can look at CyberGuerrilla, The Hack Lair, Hacker4Hire and Hackmasters, but, to be honest, there is nothing special to catch there. The only thing that stands out is the Anonymous International exchange, where you can take part in auctions where the contents of the accounts of Russian officials are raffled off.

Weapons, espionage, special operations

Runion

Russian Onion Union is the most popular and educational Russian-language dark web forum, specializing in defense and self-defense. In the “Weapons” section you can find basic concepts and FAQs on weapons, instructions and books on making homemade protective equipment, calculations of the power of explosives, discussions of military equipment, weapons and ammunition, lessons on self-defense and sabotage, as well as warnings from knowledgeable people about weapons web -forums that sell information about their visitors.

The “Security precautions” section discusses methods of wiretapping, surveillance, detection and protection against them, typical mistakes of beginner anonymous users and high-profile mistakes of famous terrorists. There are FAQs, rules and advice on safe behavior in different countries of the world, as well as ways to circumvent official prohibitions, hide potential evidence and “cover your tracks”. An instruction called “ Sanitation Day”, listing ways to maintain personal information cleanliness, will be useful to any visitor, even if he came to the forum with the most innocent intentions.

The “Information Protection” section will tell you about methods of encrypting and hiding traffic, secure services and utilities, as well as ways to increase the bulletproofness of some popular programs, devices and web servers. A topic called “Tails: FAQ”, explaining what The Amnesic Incognito Live System is, will be an excellent start for an anonymous person taking his first steps.

Raegdan's Fukken Saved

A Russian-language archive containing full and partial dumps of some clearnet sites that were “cleaned” at one time. There is a lot of interesting stuff here for gun lovers.

Dump of the steelrats.org weapons forum, storing content as of the end of 2012. The forum contains a certain amount of materials on the handicraft design of weapons, special equipment and reconnaissance equipment. You can compare it with Runion and appreciate how pathetic Anonymous looked at that time.
Drawings, photo sets and video instructions for 3D printing homemade weapons, saved from the defunct website of the American James Patrick. The weapon, however, is only suitable for self-defense, because it is plastic.
A young rebel's guide to forming his own armed gang: The ABCs of Domestic Terrorism, Guerrilla Warfare, and the Urban Guerrilla's Manual. Of course, after reading these books you won’t turn out to be any kind of “urban guerrilla” (partisans don’t really read books in general), but this can help you better understand the psychology of bandits and avoid contact with them if mass unrest occurs.

Cryptostorm

Tor version of the forum of the VPN provider of the same name, Cryptostorm, located in Iceland. Quite an informative English-language resource containing discussions on protecting and encrypting information about personal life and movements. Basically, of course, it contains sections devoted to the work of VPN Cryptostorm and the development of their utility for “absolute protection” Cryptostorm Widget. The Stormphone section contains small but valuable information and discussions on the topic of data protection on mobile devices.

Black Market

A store that positions itself as “Number One on the Tor Network” and behaves almost like it’s legal. The owners claim that they provide a worldwide quality guarantee, the weapon is tested and can be replaced if it fails (within one week), shipping is already included in the prices, and ten free rounds are included with delivery. In a word, an epic and very beautiful scam, the impression of which is not spoiled even by the golden Desert Eagle listed in the list of goods. Indeed, suddenly someone wants to anonymously and secretly buy a pistol in order to show it off to their friends. Why not.

Black Market Guns

In contrast to the previous one, this is a real gun store located in the USA and legally selling US-approved weapons, parts, spare parts and ammunition. Contains 26 positions, among which there is even a pair of night vision devices. The owners silently bypass all issues of legalizing the purchase on the buyer’s side, offering only delivery via FedEx. Shot item and assembly instructions included. The official email on tutanota.com also makes us believe in the seriousness of the proposal. But, of course, we didn’t check.

No Background Check Gun Store

A store of unknown origin (we suspect the owners are from the USA, but there is no confirmation anywhere), positioning itself as “the largest catalog of weapons on the Deep Web.” The number of items is truly impressive: owners offer a choice of 570 pistols, 230 rifles and 30 pump-action shotguns. The choice is so great that there is a catalog search. Only three facts confuse us: the large number of positions in the sections, mail on gmail.com and the most famous manufacturers in each category. Too beautiful to be true.

Euro Guns and UK Guns

Two stores of the same owner, operating respectively from Europe (presumably the Netherlands) and the UK. The owner carefully offers customers registration (why?), a referral program with a 1% deduction (oh, that's why), several ways to buy bitcoins for cash and free shipping. The assortment is small and absolutely identical, which suggests the presence of a common owner (and most likely, one person who is neither in the UK nor in Europe). If you successfully purchase something here (which is very unlikely), don’t forget to give us 1% for the tip!

MaskRabbit

A fun site that bills itself as “an anonymous agency for real world transactions.” Specializes in delivery, theft, espionage, sabotage, banditry and hacking. At the same time, it immediately amuses us with the fact that it declares to work “only with professional agents,” while simultaneously offering to send an application to join the ranks of these same “agents.” Rest, 47th, a worthy replacement has been found for you - you see, a letter has arrived from Vasya from Voronezh!

C'thulhu

An even more fun site, the name of which already speaks of the high professional level of its creators. The intentions of the “organized crime group C’thulhu” are so serious that they have to explain why you should hire them and specifically through Tor. To the reasonable question “Where are the proofs, Billy? We need proofs!” the developers answer convincingly: we delete all proofs after completing the order (for your own safety), and our customers have absolutely no time to sit on forums and respond to any letters. Nuff said.

However, the degree of fun is somewhat reduced by the presence of a public PGP key, email on bitmessage.ch and a detailed price list. Perhaps behind the deliberately ridiculous, eye-catching façade there is still a serious business hidden.

Besa Mafia

The site of an active Albanian mafia group is not at all funny. Open only after making sure there are no children nearby.

Besa Mafia operates in the United States, Canada, Europe and many other countries, offering such brutal services as debt collection (with self-harm), murder for intimidation (however, covert elimination too), setting cars and houses on fire, as well as selling unregistered weapons. In sections of the site you can find instructions on maintaining anonymity when ordering, a step-by-step description of the secure order payment process, a price list, FAQ and even a disclaimer stating that Besa Mafia services are provided solely for the purpose of protecting the client from the threat looming over him. To place an order, you need to indicate the contact of a person who is already a member of the group, otherwise you yourself may become the next target. The creators of the site also state that they are not performers: they are intermediaries and receive 20% of the amount for this. The performer receives 80%.

Well, did you believe it? Convincing enough? And now the truth: this site is a police scam. Besa Mafia administrators leak correspondence with “customers” and contacts of “performers” to law enforcement agencies in different countries. If you are paranoid, you might have suspected this even while viewing the “Video” section: the videos posted there are simple clips from American news, which are pulled from YouTube and do not work without JavaScript. However, after the Silk Road leak, most sites on Tor are similar scams.

Other useful things

Dead Drop- a service for transmitting encrypted messages. To register, you need a PGP key, which will also help you leave the message without an addressee. Those who wish to read it will be able to enter your public key, and the service will display the text.

Deep Web Radio. Considering that there are no particular problems with music on the “pure web”, the existence of an underground radio station is not easy to justify. But nevertheless it exists. You can listen to one of the five “broadcasts” and be pleased that you are doing it through Tor.

Bitcoin Block Explorer, a mirror of Blockchain.info - a site that helps track Bitcoin transactions.

Keybase- Keybase.io mirror. It allows you to associate your PGP public keys with a user profile. It doesn't hurt to register, but remember that Keybase is notorious for having a long virtual queue that you have to wait in before you can send an invitation.

Cryptome- a mirror of the legendary website about privacy and cryptography Cryptome.org. The last time it was synchronized was in 2013, but while the main site has not gone away, the point of using a hidden service instead is questionable.

Total

Of course, it is impossible to take and survey the entire dark web. First of all, because two thousand links are still two thousand links and it’s not easy to go through them all (and it’s not necessary). You probably got the general idea, and, we hope, the questions “what to see?” and “where to start?” we answered.

The second, even more important point is that the “dark” in the word “darknet” still implies that the sites are hidden from outsiders and it is impossible to get to them at a swoop. No amount of indexing will save you, and here you need an individual approach.

In general, the open part of the dark web is so reminiscent of the Internet of the nineties, with its characteristic anti-design and general carelessness, that nostalgia just hits. The main differences: there are much fewer sites in Onion and they are much more criminal. But here you can, as if in the good old days, surf the net and feel the wind of freedom blowing from all sides!

Post your links in the comments!

Surprised we missed some cool sites? Do you know interesting details that are not in this article? Leave your opinion using the form below, and the editors will take it into account in future materials.