
Only 45% of websites on the dark web host illicit activities. Typically, it’s not like that, with the majority of people accessing regular ‘surface’ websites, and using the platform to avoid encryptions or censorships, according to Tor statistics. You would expect that most people use this network for shady websites and illicit activities.

Visits to the dark web account for only 1.5% of the entire Tor traffic. This puts the network in danger of infiltration and eavesdropping. So, a Tor traffic analysis shows that some relays are more likely to be chosen, even three times more often. While founders of this system devised it to protect the anonymity of its clients, it’s not possible to create a perfectly balanced algorithm. On top of that, there are 44 machines running Tor clients, and some of the circuits built over those vantage points get chosen more often, Tor statistics show. Tor has more than 145,000 circuits built. The selection algorithms from the relay ensure that no relays that have the same IP address connect. Every client builds a circuit using three relays and then connects to the server with the circuit. Tor stats show that the way this is achieved includes 6,000 volunteer relays. The number of Tor users makes this network among the most popular ones, offering anonymity to its users at all times. Over 2 million users access the Tor platform daily. Bitcoin transactions on the dark web were on track to reach $1 billion in 2019.Of 200 domains marked as illegal on Tor, 75% are marketplaces.


The most prominent example is Tor, boasting encryption-rich protection that caters to journalists or activists in places with active censorship or internet bans. While these account for over 95% of all users, there are some alternatives, which provide more security and anonymity. We all have our favorite browsers for surfing the web, and, more often than not, it’s Google Chrome, Safari, or Firefox.
