Thank you! Yes an awful lot are just dead links and boring blogs! Then there are all the whistleblower sites of course, and hell of a lot of advice for civil rights activists. I wasn’t trying to report on Tor Hidden Services as whole though, that’s a different book. But even when Fox et al report on the market places,…

Far too many to report! I always assumed she was the real Dread Pirate Roberts...

Well I hope you’ll read it and decide for yourself. Remember, this isn’t a book about Tor Hidden Services, but rather a variety of shocking internet subcultures. I tried my best to report on them as honestly and objectively as possible.

My favourite chapter is about trolling, and I spent a lot of time in all the early trolling and flamming rooms, many of which have been archived here:

Surely you mean digital trail? And can I skip that question please?

Don’t get me started. A lot of outlets say ‘the dark net is full of guns, child porn and terrorists and it’s 500 times bigger than the actual internet’ which is complete bullshit. That’s the most common misconception, which is confusing dark web and deep web. It’s frustrating when no mention is made of all the good…

Yes I think so. Of course the authorities also have good reason to create fear and mistrust and I wouldn’t expect anything different. All the while it’s illegal, what else can they do? They can’t very well allow illegal functioning markets operate under their noses. The answer has to come from politics in the end, but…

Ha, thank you! Well my book was out before J/R so maybe his is similar to mine.... well yes I did try to remove myself as best I could since I just wanted to be as objective as possible, and not make it about me at all. I couldn’t help it in the chapter about webcamming though, which was hilarious and enjoyable (that…

Right, yes I did follow what happened to Evolution. Can’t tell exactly what took place, but it was things like this that resulted in further decentralisation to the marketplaces, most obviously mutli-sig escrow payment which defends against the flaws in any centralised market (one person can mess it all up). The…

Great question. I’ve been wondering about this myself. Islamic State certainly use Tor and other encryption systems. I published a free article on that here:

Not at all! There is at least as much bad stuff happening offline. And I didn’t try to write about the overall balance of what the net is doing to us: I just went looking for what are thought of as bad and shocking things. There is so much good as well that I wouldn’t even know where to start. The worst thing?…

Thank you! I think that I’ve sort of answered this above: that I don’t think it will be dark at all - but rather most of us will be on it. I wrote something about this here:

I of course had a great deal of difficulty researching illegal pornography since it’s a strict liability offence. But of course I needed to include the subject. And so, for example, visiting ‘text only’ chat rooms where paedophiles talk openly about their desires is highly highly troubling and disturbing. I also…

I become slightly addicted to the highs of the extreme, exaggerated emotions you feel when reading and talking about nothing but these sorts of subjects. Ordinary life can quickly feel rather dull in comparison, and that’s a problem. The other thing was how quickly I got used to all this stuff. Rather than thinking…

If you mean the Tor Hidden Services, then I always found the mundane there very funny. For example a blog about railways in (I think) Washington DC. Why put that on a Tor Hidden Service?! More generally though, after a very short while, very little surprised me. Although I must say ‘organic free trade cocaine’ did…

Yes thank you! I left slightly confused in fact by the camming. Certainly the women I spent time with really enjoyed it, felt empowered by it, and earned decent money from the safety of their own homes. They loved it! Others I think less so. But I did always have an uneasy feeling that, in the end, it was still men…

Two things: First that it’s hard to access. Second, that it’s unequivocally bad. Tor was originally a US naval intelligence project to help their agents stay hidden, and it’s won lots of awards for the furtherance of democracy and freedom around the world.

I could talk for hours about the self harm communities. But the main point I found was that they are almost entirely misunderstood. On the whole they aren’t run by evil nasty people looking to target vulnerable young people. They are run by vulnerable young people who are trying to create a supportive community of…

Excellent point, and a lot of people associated with the Tor project are always stressing all the fantastic uses to which Tor (and indeed any other type of privacy enhancing software) can provide. Snowden used Tor; it was part funded by the State Department etc. I think, as it happens, that your worries will be…

I think the distinction between Tor Hidden Services and the ‘clear net’ is increasingly a bit meaningless. You can use Tor to get on the normal net; and you can use a normal browser to get on the Tor network (although without much privacy). I also think as more and more people use the Tor network it will just start to…