Statistics has shown there are 4.9 billions active internet users, this is over half of the world’s
population. Similarly, there are 4.62 billion active social media accounts. We could argue that at least
one third of these are fake accounts. Phishing, this is a type of social engineering attack often used to
steal another person’s data, including login credentials and credit card numbers. Social engineering is
a term used for a broad range of malicious activities done through a number of different human
interactions.

A high percentage of internet users predominantly use one of the big three search engines, Google,
Bing and Yahoo. Outside of the United States, UK and Europe the number one search engine in
Russia is Yandex and Baidu in China.

Very few people actually realise that the surface web, (the top five search engines) only accounts for
4% of the data available on the internet today. Source: Visual Capitalist
Where is the remaining 96% of information stored and what does it consist of?
Good question, the answer to this is the Dark Web also known as the Deep Web. You may have
heard of terms such as search engine optimisation (SEO) and Website page ranking, in simplistic
terms, the remaining 96% of data on the web is not optimised for the major search engines’ crawler
bots, which essentially map and index the content on a web page. These .onion domains are not
registered with the internet’s domain name service (DNS) so to access them you need to use a
special type of browser called Tor.

Have you ever considered just how much information about you or your business is contained in
some of the other areas of the web?
For most people, even the mention of the Dark Web conjures up thoughts of a scary place for illegal
or illicit activities, drugs, guns and a place to purchase stolen credentials.
What does this mean for your personal or business information? Is any of your data available on the
Dark Web? How would you know? How do you begin to search and ascertain if your details have
been compromised by a data breach and subsequently found their way onto the Dark Web?
It is no secret search engines and websites collect our data, most times we even agree to it
happening. The burning question is, how do we establish if our personal, private information is
accessible unwittingly or without our agreement. This could have involved viewing something as
simple as free products or services.

Have you ever wondered why Facebook rebranded to Meta? Those in the know consider the obvious
answer is the hype of the Metaverse and the opportunities that brings. The elements of a new digital
age are converging at scale. The metaverse is the driving force bringing these elements together in a
unified, immersive experience however, if we look beyond the fun, games and opportunities, can we
ever be confident of a fundamental right to privacy and protection of our personal data? Will a whole
new decentralised world make a difference when there are so many data breaches in our current
digital environment, what lessons have been learned?

Would it surprise you to learn Meta (Facebook) allow accounts to be opened using a dark web site?
How would you proceed if you thought your personal or company data had been compromised? Who
may have unauthorised access to such data – email addresses, passwords, phone numbers just to
mention a few.

Consider the option of a no obligation, initial consultation with Fox Robinson Investigations to discuss
how Open Source Intelligence Techniques (OSINT) can help you discover what information is

accessible on the Dark Web and establish how we can help you not to only discover this and what
can be done to have it removed.

We provide numerous services covering different methodologies to establish what can be found on
individuals and businesses then we can discuss the best plan of action, and any necessary next
steps.

You can visit our website or call us directly if your requirements are urgent.