Yesterday, on /r/deepweb, one of the mods, who goes by the name of system33-, shared a fascinating link. It’s called All Onion Services, and that’s not a misnomer (it’s also, appropriately, on Tor at http://ypqmhx5z3q5o6beg.onion/.) The site really does list every onion site (a.k.a. Tor hidden service) that exists, including ones that are no longer online, or even some that are not yet online:

In total, there are approximately 1.2 septillion onion sites! Compared to some of the more organized onion site indexes, it’s not all that helpful, as you have to wade through the index yourself to find links, and as you know if you’ve used Tor, many of these links are frequently down.

The idea behind this site wasn’t necessarily to create a helpful index, however – it was to prove a point. If you listen to the creepypastas and urban legends, all you have to do is “dig deeper,” and you’ll eventually come across red rooms, hitmen, and disturbing shit. All Onions attempts to put those myths to bed by revealing all the onion sites that have ever existed, currently exist, or will exist.

I have yet to start wading through the list myself, but based on my two years of experience with Tor thus far, I think the site is correct. Most onion sites aren’t all that interesting, depending on what you’re looking for. They interest me in a technical sense, because I enjoy learning about how Tor works, and the methods it uses to keep you anonymous.

For those coders who may be curious about the source code of AOS, check out this repository: gogs: mello/onion-service-index

On the other hand, what I’ve discovered, over time, is that most of the creepy stories are just that – stories. If you’re looking for anything darker than that, it likely doesn’t exist.

Now, granted, All Onion Services only indexes sites that are on Tor – so that doesn’t include I2P, Freenet, ZeroNet, etc. However, in my experience with these other networks, their sites tend to be pretty similar: a lot of technical/hacking stuff, a bunch of scams, with a little bit of disturbing shit thrown in. It’s nothing like the horror stories you hear on /r/nosleep or places like that. Because horror stories will always be exaggerated! They wouldn’t be scary otherwise.

Be that as it may, I’m curious to go through the link list and see if I find anything interesting. That may be a subject for some future posts. Happy to be back, everybody!

I hope this site proves useful, and perhaps dispels some of the myths about the dark web. We shall see – people believe what they want to believe, even if the evidence is staring them in the face.

Yeah, something like that.