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What really happens on the dark web and how to stay safe
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The dark web often feels like a mystery, hidden beneath the surface of the internet that most people use every day. But to understand how scams and cybercrimes actually work, you need to know what happens in those hidden corners where criminals trade data, services and stolen access.
Cybercriminals rely on a structured underground economy, complete with marketplaces, rules and even dispute systems to operate safely away from law enforcement. By learning how these systems function, you can better understand the threats that could reach you and avoid becoming the next target.
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5 SOCIAL MEDIA SAFETY TIPS TO PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY ONLINE
Learn how to protect your personal information from dark web threats with simple cybersecurity habits and tools. (Phil Barker/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Inside the hidden layers of the internet
The internet is often divided into three layers: the clear web, the deep web and the dark web. The clear web is the open part of the internet that search engines like Google or Bing can index, including news sites, blogs, stores and public pages. Beneath it lies the deep web, which includes pages not meant for public indexing, such as corporate intranets, private databases and webmail portals. Most of the content in the deep web is legal but simply restricted to specific users.
The dark web, however, is where anonymity and illegality intersect. It requires special software such as Tor to access, and much of its activity happens behind encryption and invitation-only walls. Tor, short for The Onion Router, was originally developed by the U.S. Navy for secure communication but has since become a haven for both privacy advocates and criminals.
It anonymizes users by routing traffic through multiple encrypted layers, making it almost impossible to trace where a request truly came from. This anonymity allows criminals to communicate, sell data and conduct illegal trade with reduced risk of exposure.
Over time, the dark web has become a hub for criminal commerce. Marketplaces once operated like eBay for illegal goods, offering everything from drugs and stolen credit card data to hacking tools and fake identities. Many of these platforms have been shut down, but the trade continues on smaller, more private channels, including encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram. Vendors use aliases, ratings and escrow systems to build credibility.
Ironically, even among criminals, trust is a critical part of business. Forums often have administrators, verified sellers and mediators to settle disputes. Members who cheat others or fail to deliver are quickly blacklisted, and reputation becomes the main currency that determines who can be trusted.
The criminal economy and how scams are born
Every major cyberattack or data leak often traces back to the dark web’s underground economy. A single attack typically involves several layers of specialists. It begins with information stealers, malware designed to capture credentials, cookies and device fingerprints from infected machines. The stolen data is then bundled and sold in dark web markets by data suppliers. Each bundle, known as a log, might contain login credentials, browser sessions and even authentication tokens, often selling for less than $20.
Another group of criminals, known as initial access brokers, purchases these logs to gain entry into corporate systems. With that access, they can impersonate legitimate users and bypass security measures such as multi-factor authentication by mimicking the victim’s usual device or browser. Once inside, these brokers sometimes auction their access to larger criminal gangs or ransomware operators who are capable of exploiting it further.
Some of these auctions are run as competitions, while others are flash sales where well-funded groups can buy access immediately without bidding. Eventually, this chain of transactions ends with a ransomware attack or an extortion demand, as attackers encrypt sensitive data or threaten to leak it publicly.
Interestingly, even within these illegal spaces, scams are common. New vendors often post fake listings for stolen data or hacking tools, collect payments and disappear. Others impersonate trusted members or set up counterfeit escrow services to lure buyers.
Despite all the encryption and reputation systems, no one is truly safe from fraud, not even the criminals themselves. This constant cycle of deception forces dark web communities to build internal rules, verification processes and penalties to keep their operations somewhat functional.
What you can do to stay ahead of dark web-driven threats
For ordinary people and businesses, understanding how these networks operate is key to preventing their effects. Many scams that appear in your inbox or on social media originate from credentials or data first stolen and sold on the dark web. That is why basic digital hygiene goes a long way. Below are some steps you can take to stay protected.
MAJOR COMPANIES, INCLUDING GOOGLE AND DIOR, HIT BY MASSIVE SALESFORCE DATA BREACH
From password managers to antivirus software, experts share practical ways to keep hackers out of your data. (Annette Riedl/picture alliance via Getty Images)
1) Invest in personal data removal services
A growing number of companies specialize in removing your personal data from online databases and people search sites. These platforms often collect and publish names, addresses, phone numbers and even family details without consent, creating easy targets for scammers and identity thieves.
While no service can guarantee the complete removal of your data from the internet, a data removal service is really a smart choice. They aren’t cheap, and neither is your privacy. These services do all the work for you by actively monitoring and systematically erasing your personal information from hundreds of websites. It’s what gives me peace of mind and has proven to be the most effective way to erase your personal data from the internet. By limiting the information available, you reduce the risk of scammers cross-referencing data from breaches with information they might find on the dark web, making it harder for them to target you.
Check out my top picks for data removal services and get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web by visiting Cyberguy.com.
Get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web: Cyberguy.com.
2) Use unique passwords and a password manager
One of the easiest ways to stay safe online is to use unique, complex passwords for every account you own. Many breaches happen because people reuse the same password across multiple services. When one site is hacked, cybercriminals take those leaked credentials and try them elsewhere, a technique known as credential stuffing. A password manager eliminates this problem by generating strong, random passwords and securely storing them for you.
Next, see if your email has been exposed in past breaches. Our No. 1 password manager (see Cyberguy.com) pick includes a built-in breach scanner that checks whether your email address or passwords have appeared in known leaks. If you discover a match, immediately change any reused passwords and secure those accounts with new, unique credentials.
Check out the best expert-reviewed password managers of 2025 at Cyberguy.com.
3) Install strong antivirus protection
Antivirus software remains one of the most effective ways to detect and block malicious programs before they can steal your information. Modern antivirus solutions do far more than just scan for viruses. They monitor system behavior, detect phishing attempts and prevent infostealer malware from sending your credentials or personal data to attackers.
The best way to safeguard yourself from malicious links that install malware, potentially accessing your private information, is to have strong antivirus software installed on all your devices. This protection can also alert you to phishing emails and ransomware scams, keeping your personal information and digital assets safe.
Get my picks for the best 2025 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices at Cyberguy.com.
4) Keep your software updated
Outdated software is one of the biggest entry points for attackers. Cybercriminals often exploit known vulnerabilities in operating systems, browsers and plugins to deliver malware or gain access to systems. Installing updates as soon as they are available is one of the simplest yet most effective forms of defense. Enable automatic updates for your operating system, browsers and critical applications.
5) Enable two-factor authentication
Even if your password gets leaked or stolen, two-factor authentication (2FA) adds an additional barrier for attackers. With 2FA, logging in requires both your password and a secondary verification method. This includes code from an authentication app or a hardware security key.
6) Consider identity theft protection services
Identity theft protection can provide early warnings if your personal information appears in data breaches or on dark web marketplaces. These services monitor your sensitive data, such as Social Security numbers, bank details or email addresses. If anything suspicious is detected, they alert you. Many providers also offer recovery assistance, helping you restore stolen identities or close fraudulent accounts. While no service can prevent identity theft entirely, these tools can shorten your response time and limit potential damage if your data is compromised.
See my tips and best picks on how to protect yourself from identity theft at Cyberguy.com.
SCAMMERS NOW IMPERSONATE COWORKERS, STEAL EMAIL THREADS IN CONVINCING PHISHING ATTACKS
Protecting your identity starts with strong passwords, two-factor authentication and regular software updates. (Jens Kalaene/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Kurt’s key takeaway
The dark web thrives on the idea that anonymity equals safety. But while criminals may feel protected, law enforcement and security researchers continue to monitor and infiltrate these spaces. Over the years, many large marketplaces have been dismantled, and hundreds of operators have been caught despite their layers of encryption. The takeaway for everyone else is that the more you understand how these underground systems function, the better prepared you are to recognize warning signs and protect yourself.
Do you think law enforcement can ever truly catch up with dark web criminals? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.
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A long time ago, in 2004, the Federal Communications Commission laid down a rule designed to prevent a monopoly: No one company could broadcast to more than 39 percent of all the TV households in the United States. But then Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025. Brendan Carr became FCC chairman and immediately kicked off a deregulatory initiative called “Delete, Delete, Delete,” in which Carr vowed to get rid of “every rule, regulation, or guidance document” that placed “unnecessary regulatory burdens” on companies. And within months, Nexstar, which already owned over 200 stations nationwide and had hit its ownership cap, announced that it had entered an agreement to purchase its rival, Tegna, for an estimated $6.2 billion — something that could only happen, however, if Carr agreed to change the FCC’s rules.
If you ask Nexstar why it’s pursuing a merger that would give it control of over 80 percent of the market, it’d point to Big Tech as the culprit. As advertisers take their money to Netflix, YouTube, and other digital streamers, linear television — the local television news, the broadcast affiliates, the basic cable networks — has suffered, forcing them to consolidate and shut down newsrooms. In that sense, Nexstar argued, the merger would help it compete for ad revenue with the streaming services, thereby building more robust local journalism. However, the merger’s opponents believe that this is a basic violation of antitrust laws and principles — not to mention the danger of letting one company have editorial control over the vast majority of America’s local television newsrooms.
But the second Trump administration handles regulatory hurdles a little differently than others, and companies have found that it’s faster to get what they want if they bypass the agencies and talk (read: suck up) to Trump directly. And when Nexstar did so publicly, it confirmed its opponents’ fears about political influence. Last September, in the fraught weeks after the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, Nexstar announced it would no longer broadcast Jimmy Kimmel Live! — a response to Carr’s claim that the FCC could revoke the broadcast licenses of TV stations that aired the comedian’s comments related to Kirk. It briefly led to ABC suspending Kimmel’s show, though ABC and Nexstar soon reversed their decision after a massive nationwide backlash and an ABC boycott.
However, Nexstar’s loyalty to Trump himself was not enough to win over his most powerful MAGA supporters. Newsmax, a cable news network with a deeply pro-Trump bent, and its CEO, longtime Trump donor and outside adviser Chris Ruddy, filed a lawsuit objecting to the merger, claiming that Nexstar’s anticompetitive behavior would force channels like his off the air with steeper carriage fees. He specifically accused Nexstar of jacking up the fees for stations to carry Newsmax, while offering its similar network, NewsNation, for much cheaper.
The Nexstar-Tegna MAGA makeover then took a more subtle turn. NewsNation hired the pro-Trump Fox News commentator Katie Pavlich and gave her her own primetime show. (The network had already hired a slew of former Fox journalists as well.) Around this time, a political group called Keep News Local began airing ads in DC that seemed to directly address Trump, praising him for having “defeated the fake news monopolies before through independent voices and local news” and claiming that the Nexstar-Tegna merger was “crucial for MAGA to survive.” (A little self-contradictory and mildly illogical, but it’s the kind of stuff that Trump likes to hear.) When I last spoke to Ruddy in February, I asked if he’d worried that the dark money going into Keep News Local would sway Trump, and he chose his words carefully: “I think at the end of the day, Trump makes up his own mind. I’m not sure he’s going to be influenced by an ad campaign.”
For months, no one could accurately predict if Trump would override Carr’s wishes and bless the deal, as he’s often done for other companies facing regulatory scrutiny. Trump’s Truth Social posts about the merger have been a good indicator of how precarious the merger has been and who’s been able to influence him at any given moment: Last November, he blasted the deal as an “EXPANSION OF THE FAKE NEWS NETWORKS,” but by February, he posted that the deal would “help knock out the Fake News because there will be more competition.”
Several current and former NewsNation employees told Status at the time that they feared that the parent company was steering NewsNation away from the centrist, “unbiased” reputation they’d long cultivated. “A lot of people within the network believe that the network has gone hard right to appeal to Trump and Brendan Carr,” one former employee told Status. Coincidentally, days before the deal was finalized, NewsNation began ramping up its explicitly pro-Trump content, tweeting a clip of CNN’s Kaitlan Collins being berated by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, along with the comment “Just going to leave this here.”
When Trump greenlit the merger in mid-March, but before the FCC’s three commissioners could vote on whether to waive the ownership cap, Nexstar and Tegna immediately announced a new complication: Tegna and Nexstar had already started merging. Tegna was no more and CEO Mike Steib had already sold $22.6 million of his company stock.
In response, eight state attorneys general and satellite TV operator DirectTV, which had already been planning to file separate federal antitrust suits against the merger, asked US District Judge Troy Nunley in Sacramento for an emergency restraining order that would prevent Nexstar from taking over Tegna’s assets. The order was granted on March 27th and on April 17, Nunley issued a formal injunction, ruling that Tegna must be operated as an independent financial entity, and Nexstar must take steps to ensure it remains separate from Tegna before further legal proceedings.
For now, Nunley has allowed the states and DirecTV to combine their cases, in which both argue that the merger was a clear violation of antitrust laws and would crush news competition.
Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats in Congress are furious at Carr. On March 30th, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) sent the chairman a joint letter admonishing him for allowing his staff to waive the regulations to let the merger pass, instead of having the full commission of political appointees — one from the Biden administration — vote on it. “Under these circumstances,” they wrote, “any subsequent vote risks being largely procedural rather than a genuine exercise of commission responsibility.” They also pointed out that their hasty approval without the commission’s approval would now complicate the merger financially: “In a transaction of this scale, where integration proceeds quickly and unwinding becomes impractical, delay in judicial review can insulate the decision from meaningful challenge.” Notably, though they share similar ideological views on the media and deregulation, Cruz and Carr have frequently clashed over how to achieve their objectives. Cruz previously slammed Carr as a “mafioso,” for instance, for the way he’d used the FCC to silence Kimmel.
But even if it’s legally paused, the journalistic merger’s fallout has started to hit local news. NPR’s David Folkenfirk reported on Tuesday that Tegna journalists had already started receiving orders to stop broadcasting content from major broadcasters like ABC, CBS, and NBC — media outlets being targeted by Carr — and instead begin airing content from Nexstar’s NewsNation.
- Brendan Carr’s views on using the FCC to punish major broadcasters was outlined pretty extensively in the chapter he authored in Project 2025, an initiative led by the conservative Heritage Foundation on how to reform the federal bureaucracy to be more favorable to the American right.
- Exactly how much is local television losing to digital? According to industry publication NewscastStudio, in an investor call defending the purchase, Nexstar chairman Perry Sook cited a market research study from Borrell Associates, which found that “digital advertising in local markets exceeds $100 billion, compared to just $25 billion for local linear television advertising, with nearly two-thirds of digital ad dollars flowing to five major technology companies.”
- If you want to see exactly how much Keep Local News was trying to suck up to Trump, the ads are archived here.
- The Vergecast has a long-running segment called “Brendan Carr is a dummy.”
- The LA Times reported on last week’s preliminary hearings in front of Nunley, and how lawyers for Nexstar, the states, and DirecTV plan to argue their case.
- The Desk has insights from Kirk Varner, a former TV newsroom director, on how the case could go.
- Andrew Liptak covered Nexstar’s previous acquisition sprees for The Verge in 2018.
- Adi Robertson walks through exactly how the Kimmel suspension was an attack on free speech.
- Brendan Carr keeps trying to convince people that he’s not threatening to suspend broadcast licenses for reporting on unfavorable things like the Iran war, reports Lauren Feiner.
- The Vergecast has a long-running segment called “Brendan Carr is a dummy.”
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A Chinese-built humanoid robot beat the human half-marathon world record in Beijing on Sunday, marking a breakthrough moment in a high-stakes global race for technological dominance.
A robot developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor completed the 21-kilometer (13-mile) race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, beating the human record of about 57 minutes set by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo last month.
The performance marked a dramatic improvement from last year’s inaugural event, when the top robot finished in more than 2 hours and 40 minutes.
Dozens of humanoid robots competed alongside about 12,000 human runners, navigating a parallel course to avoid collisions.
CHINA’S COMPACT HUMANOID ROBOT SHOWS OFF BALANCE AND FLIPS
A robot crosses the finish line in the Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon held in the outskirts of Beijing on April 19, 2026. (Andy Wong/AP)
Nearly half of the robots ran using autonomous navigation, while others relied on remote control, organizers said.
Despite the breakthrough, the race still saw glitches, with some robots stumbling at the start or veering into barriers.
Engineers said the winning robot was designed to mimic elite athletes, featuring long legs of about 37 inches and advanced cooling systems to sustain performance.
US TARGETS CHINESE ROBOTS OVER SECURITY FEARS
“Looking ahead, some of these technologies might be transferred to other areas,” said Du Xiaodi, an engineer with the Honor team. “For example, structural reliability and liquid-cooling technology could be applied in future industrial scenarios.”
Team members celebrate next to the winning Honor Lightning humanoid robot during a medal ceremony after the second Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon in Beijing, China, on April 19, 2026. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)
Spectators reacted with a mix of amazement and unease at the machines’ rapid progress.
“It’s the first time robots have surpassed humans, and that’s something I never imagined,” Sun Zhigang, who attended the event with his son, told The Associated Press.
HUMANOID ROBOTS HIT MASS PRODUCTION IN CHINA
“The robots’ speed far exceeds that of humans,” spectator Wang Wen told the outlet. “This may signal the arrival of sort of a new era.”
A robot starts alongside human runners at the Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Half Marathon on the outskirts of Beijing on April 19, 2026. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
Experts say the race highlights China’s accelerating push to dominate robotics and artificial intelligence, even as widespread commercial use of humanoid robots remains limited, according to Reuters. The experts said Chinese robotics firms are still working to develop the AI software needed for humanoids to match the efficiency of human factory workers.
Runners take pictures of a humanoid robot during the second Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon in Beijing on April 19, 2026. (Haruna Furuhashi/Pool Photo via AP)
“The future will definitely be an AI era,” engineering student Chu Tianqi told Reuters. “If people don’t know how to use AI now … they will definitely become obsolete.”
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The competition underscores a broader technological race between China and the United States, as Beijing invests heavily in advanced robotics as part of its long-term economic strategy.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
According to Nikkei Asia, even as suppliers ramp up DRAM production, manufacturers are only expected to meet 60 percent of demand by the end of 2027. SK Group chairman has even said that shortages could last until 2030.
The world’s largest memory makers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — are all working to add new fabrication capacity, but almost none of it will be online until at least 2027, if not 2028. SK opened a fab in Cheongju in February, but that is the only increase in production among the three for 2026.
Nikkei says that production would need to increase by 12 percent a year in 2026 and 2027 to meet demand. But according to Counterpoint Research, an increase of only 7.5 percent is planned.
The new facilities will primarily focus on producing high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which is used in AI data centers. With the companies already prioritizing HBM over general-purpose DRAM used in computers and phones, it’s not clear how much these new fabs will help alleviate the price crunch facing consumer electronics. Everything from phones and laptops, to VR headsets and gaming handhelds have seen price increases due to the RAM shortage.
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