As a boy child growing up in the early 90's in a small town in Zimbabwe, creature comforts such as children these days have were a rarity. Communication gadgets and kiddy laptops were unheard of, let alone portable gaming devices. What kids in my generation had the immense pleasure of enjoying were toy cars and little plastic soldiers that carried weapons. Such toys were not regular consignments for me either, i was mostly used to pushing bricks in sand and pretending they were cars. It is not surprising therefore that each time my parents bought mechanized toy cars for me and my little brother Ben, i would painstakingly drive them to my garage and take them apart, merely to determine how they work. I daresay, the curiosity trait in me was founded and over the years, got cultivated into a full blown desire to acquire knowledge.

In secondary School, i studied Science and Arts subjects and with our European rooted education system, my criteria for selecting A'level subjects would slide upon the same rail i had followed prior. To my parent's annoyance and my teacher's bafflement, i chose purely commercial subjects at A'level and i think my choice was based on the fact that those subjects were unchartered lands to me, i was exhausted by merely treading along the same paths. Im an explorer at heart. Few years down the line, i'm at University pursuing an Economics degree but it all becomes terribly monotonous, i find myself in South Africa teaching engineering diploma courses but as my trend would reflect, the moment i was quite proficient, i followed the I.T. route.

I wish i could tell you i landed myself in class and was taught the intricate details of coding but that, alas, is not my modus operandi. I am not a sailor, neither am i a sailboat designer. I am that boy who looks out his window in the class by the docks and marvels at the sails, deck, mast and mastheads of the ships at port. When i get home, i start to try to build my own sailboat which i also attempt to sail, without any prior knowledge. It is for this reason that i acquainted myself with various C.M.S. and ventured into Web Development. That is also the reason why i acquired software, and taught myself corporate branding and graphics and also dabbled in video filming and editing. I simply have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge but hate being on the listening end of the classroom.

My latest quest has been The Dark Web and The Deep Web and the distinctions thereof. I have known of its existence and heard of it millions of times in movies yet it only dawned on me one day as i sat in my office: "How come iv never thought to access the dark web." My research into it began. By that i mean, i googled it, found a few pages on it (most of which were warning blogs against accessing it), rifled through them and merely 20 minutes later was on the dark web via The Tor Browser found my way to The Hidden Wiki (basically the hidden web's version of Wikipedia) which was located here: http://zqktlwi4fecvo6ri.onion but don't bother accessing it from your conventional browser, it will disappoint you like a cheap hooker!

Upon landing in the lush jungle of Hidden Wiki, it was quite easy to navigate to various places of interest. These included DuckDuckGo - A Hidden Service that searches the clearnet.,
Torch - Tor Search Engine. Claims to index around 1.1 Million pages., Sinbad Search- Search engine. Despite the earlier warnings from various blogs, i felt immensely safe util i started coming across sites such as: SOL's USD Counterfeits - High Quality 20 USD Counterfeit Notes - Trusted Service., Clone CC Crew - No.1 Trusted onion site for Cloned Credit Card. $2000/$5000 balance available, Fake Passport ID sale - Good website selling qualitative EU/US/AUS/CAN fake passports, ID cards, driver's licenses., AlphaBay Market - Drugs and Weapons Marketplace, with Escrow., Drugs4You - Drugs and Medicines from Germany - Weed, XTC, MDMA, Cocaine, Crystal Meth, Speed and a lot more. Medications - Ritalin, Diazepam, Tilidin, Rohypnol, Ketamine, Vicodin, Oxycodone, Tramadol, and a lot more. We ship from Germany!

I even came across links to animal porn and child pornography and this entire time, i was tip toeing around with my mouse. It seemed the warnings were real. Then i found myself on BlackBook - Social media site (The facebook of TOR) where i had quite an intriguing conversation with a 19 year old Latino boy (or so he claimed). It would have been out of context to exit the dark web without searching my own name, so i did just that on a number of .onion search engines and got no results whatsoever, so i decided to quit while i was ahead, and go back to my beloved Firefox after, of course, downloading a few treasures. I have a feeling i shall soon have very high frequent flyer point on the Dark Web.

My Verdict: Much as the dark web is an often dangerous place, it is also a deep pool of very useful information. If you know what to avoid, you clearly will not be getting a call from the F.B.I. as it is not illegal to access the Dark Web. Steer clear of illegal dealings.

I deliberately chose not to provide deep "How To" information as there are already so many resources to learn that from. I am not an advocate for the deep web, but i need certain misconceptions about it cleared, however, im not going to remove the warning labels! ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!! Here are a few informative pieces: