Experian and many other companies are pushing “dark web scans.” They promise to search the dark web for your personal information to see if criminals are selling it.
Don’t waste your money!
What is the Dark Web?
The “dark web” consists of hidden websites that you can’t access without special software. These websites won’t appear when you use Google or almost any another search engines, and you can’t even access them unless you go out of your way to use the appropriate tools.
For example, the Tor browser can be used for anonymous browsing of the normal web, but it also hides special sites known as “.onion sites” or “Tor hidden services.” These websites use Tor to cloak their location, and you only access them through the Tor network.
There are legitimate uses for Tor hidden services. This allows people in countries where Facebook is blocked to access Facebook. But the dark web is also used for criminal activities.
If you’re going to sell databases of people’s credit card and social security numbers online, you want to hide your location, so the authorities won’t swoop in. That’s why criminals often sell this data on the dark web. It’s the same reason why the infamous Silk Road website, an online black market for drugs and other illicit products and services, was only available through Tor.
They’re Not Scanning the Entire Dark Web
Let’s get one thing straight: These services are not scanning the entire dark web for your data. That’s just impossible.
There are 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 possible site addresses on the dark web, (or one septillion, two hundred eight sextillion, nine hundred twenty-five quintillion, eight hundred nineteen quadrillion, six hundred fourteen trillion, six hundred twenty-nine billion, one hundred seventy-four million, seven hundred six thousand, and one hundred seventy-six hidden service addresses) and that’s just counting Tor .onion sites. It wouldn’t be possible to check each one to see if they’re online and then also look for your data on them.
Even if these services were scanning the entirety of the public dark web—which they’re not—they wouldn’t be able to see the exclusive stuff anyway. That would be exchanged privately and not made public.
What Does a “Dark Web Scan” Do, Then?
No company that offers a “dark web scan” will tell you what they do, but we can certainly make an informed guess. These companies are gathering data dumps made public on popular websites on the dark web.
When we say “data dumps,” we’re referring to big databases of usernames and passwords—as well as other personal information, like social security numbers and credit card details—that are stolen from compromised websites and released online.
Rather than scanning the dark web, they’re scanning lists of leaked passwords and personal information—which, admittedly, are often found on the dark web. They’ll then inform you if your personal information is found on one of the lists they could get their hands on.
However, even if a dark web scan says you’re fine, you might not be—they’re only searching the publicly available leaks to which they have access. They can’t scan everything out there.
How to Monitor Data Breaches for Free
Behind all the “dark web scan” hype, there’s a somewhat useful service here. But, guess what: You can already do much of this for free.
Troy Hunt’s Have I Been Pwned? will tell you whether your email address or password appears in one of 322 (and counting) data dumps from websites. You can also have it notify you when your email address appears in a new data dump.
This service doesn’t scan to see if your social security number is included in any of these leaks, as dark web scans promise to do. But, if you’re just looking to see if your credentials have leaked, it’s a useful service.
As always, it’s a good idea to use unique passwords everywhere. That way, even if your email address and password from one website appear in a leak, criminals can’t just try that combination on other websites to gain access to your accounts. A password manager can remember all those unique passwords for you.
Read the full post by Chris Hoffman of How-To Geek at https://www.howtogeek.com/394427/what-is-a-dark-web-scan-and-should-you-use-one/ for much more information.
If you have questions about the dark web, please, DON’T attempt to go there to learn about it, that could be very dangerous. Instead, call our HBBTech tech support department at (636) 542-8701.
