What is the best darknet in existence?

[Sicklick]

Fastest: Tor.
Most users: Tor.
Most websites: Tor.

Most Secure: I2P.
Best Redundancy: I2P.
Best Resistance to DDoS: I2P.

I should add that Tor relies on central servers to build address consensus and maintain the flow of data on the network. If these servers go away; Tor goes away. Whereas on I2P, the individual clients are also the servers. Everyone is a DNS, everyone is a transit node AKA router.

There is also a procedure for re-booting ("reseeding") the entire I2P network from scratch, in the even ot a catastrophic failure of the internet that requires everyone to "start over". Tor can not do this.


I use it to post here on the farms, nigger.
No one, fed or cow, can ever subpoena my IP and reveal my identity for something I post. Can you say the same?
And the communities and chans are great, if you know where to look.

Also, I host sites on the "dark web".

I have a question for you about something regarding I2P and other darknet in general as well as even the clearnet: I know you can self-host an email through a personal website on I2P, much like you can on the clearnet. Can you do this on other darknet, such as Tor or Lokinet even? Also, what's the real difference between self-hosting emails on I2P vs. The clearnet regarding OPSEC? Also, how do you do it?

 

[TheSkoomer]

I have a question for you about something regarding I2P and other darknet in general as well as even the clearnet: I know you can self-host an email through a personal website on I2P, much like you can on the clearnet. Can you do this on other darknet, such as Tor or Lokinet even? Also, what's the real difference between self-hosting emails on I2P vs. The clearnet regarding OPSEC? Also, how do you do it?

It's complicated.

Yes, you can host an email (smtp) server on I2P and on Tor. (Just as you can host nearly any type of server on the dark web)
No, most mainstream email servers like Gmail won't accept a message coming from some random SMTP server on the dark web.

Most email software, both client and server, has a requirement for an email address to be connected to a domain name, so you can't just put up a server with email addresses like "name@[IP ADDRESS]" it needs to be "name@[DOMAIN]" Luckily both Tor and I2P associate every address with a domain ending with .onion or .i2p, respectively, so this it not much of a problem. But your clearweb email services are still likely to not accept messages from email addresses ending with .onion or .i2p, and certainly won't be able to send messages to any of these addresses.

So your self-hosted Tor/I2P email server will only be able to exchange messages between individual users on your own server, or with other email servers on the dark web.

The only good email provider I've found on Tor that can also talk to the clearweb is "Elude." I use it personally.
Do not trust Protonmail on Tor. They force users to log in via the clearweb at least once to deanonymize themselves.

I2P, by default comes with tunnels to an email provider on I2P for pop3 and smtp; "Postman.i2p" I do not know if it can talk to the clear web, I don't have an account with that service.
Additionally, I2P also has "Bote" peer-to-peer distributed email, which you can only use to send mail to fellow Bote users.

Retroshare's email system works on clearweb, Tor, and I2P, but you can only send email to other Retroshare users.

 

[TurdFondler]

I haven't found much of anything good on the darknets. i2p is such a pain to set up and use, I'm sure I haven't seen much. What I have seen on TOR and i2p is mostly drugs, schizoposting and questionable porn.

It seems like people go on the darknet to find very specific things and not much else.

 

[Sicklick]

It's complicated.

Yes, you can host an email (smtp) server on I2P and on Tor. (Just as you can host nearly any type of server on the dark web)
No, most mainstream email servers like Gmail won't accept a message coming from some random SMTP server on the dark web.

Most email software, both client and server, has a requirement for an email address to be connected to a domain name, so you can't just put up a server with email addresses like "name@[IP ADDRESS]" it needs to be "name@[DOMAIN]" Luckily both Tor and I2P associate every address with a domain ending with .onion or .i2p, respectively, so this it not much of a problem. But your clearweb email services are still likely to not accept messages from email addresses ending with .onion or .i2p, and certainly won't be able to send messages to any of these addresses.

So your self-hosted Tor/I2P email server will only be able to exchange messages between individual users on your own server, or with other email servers on the dark web.

The only good email provider I've found on Tor that can also talk to the clearweb is "Elude." I use it personally.
Do not trust Protonmail on Tor. They force users to log in via the clearweb at least once to deanonymize themselves.

I2P, by default comes with tunnels to an email provider on I2P for pop3 and smtp; "Postman.i2p" I do not know if it can talk to the clear web, I don't have an account with that service.
Additionally, I2P also has "Bote" peer-to-peer distributed email, which you can only use to send mail to fellow Bote users.

Retroshare's email system works on clearweb, Tor, and I2P, but you can only send email to other Retroshare users.

How would you compare some of that stuff you mentioned to clearnet self-hosting via personal domain?

 

[skrowl]

If you want to buy drugs, Tor is the best.

If you want to easily share something via Tor, look at OnionShare.

If you want to create a private darknet between you and your friends, check out ZeroTier.

Somehow we got talking about SMTP servers after OP. If you just want to send encrypted emails with your buddies, but want a simple IM-style interface, look at Delta Chat. It has the side benefit of being impossible to take down or block, since it just uses regular email as a transport.

 

[H. P. Hatecraft]

Even the CIA has an onion address. So take it all with a grain of salt. If they want to find you, they will.

 

[TheSkoomer]

How would you compare some of that stuff you mentioned to clearnet self-hosting via personal domain?

Hosting on the clear web with a regular domain lets your smtp server communicate with other email servers on the clearweb such as gmail, etc.
If you have users who are also using your server, you can also set up a Tor frontend so that your server handles both clearweb and Tor users. This lets your individual users maintain their anonymity, but doesn't give you any anonymity; all the emails from your users appear to be coming directly from your server's IP (or from the IP of your Tor rig, if it's on a seperate VM or seperate hardware.) This is how all the Tor email providers that are also able to talk to the clearweb work; they also have clearweb domains to let them talk to the outside. The users have anonymity, the person hosting the server does not.

Whereas if you're operating on the dark web with no clearweb domain, your server will be dark web only and your server can't talk to gmail, etc, even through an exit node or outproxy. Can't talk to the clearweb email services without a clearweb address.

What's best really depends what you want to do with this email server, and whether you're the only user, or you're providing mailboxes to other users, and where you're sending/receiving emails to/from.

Even the CIA has an onion address. So take it all with a grain of salt. If they want to find you, they will.

Tor was made by the US Navy and funded by the CIA. This is common knowledge.

Don't misinterpret this as it being a honeypot. They funded it because they actively use it "in the field".

 

[Sicklick]

Hosting on the clear web with a regular domain lets your smtp server communicate with other email servers on the clearweb such as gmail, etc.
If you have users who are also using your server, you can also set up a Tor frontend so that your server handles both clearweb and Tor users. This lets your individual users maintain their anonymity, but doesn't give you any anonymity; all the emails from your users appear to be coming directly from your server's IP (or from the IP of your Tor rig, if it's on a seperate VM or seperate hardware.) This is how all the Tor email providers that are also able to talk to the clearweb work; they also have clearweb domains to let them talk to the outside. The users have anonymity, the person hosting the server does not.

Whereas if you're operating on the dark web with no clearweb domain, your server will be dark web only and your server can't talk to gmail, etc, even through an exit node or outproxy. Can't talk to the clearweb email services without a clearweb address.

What's best really depends what you want to do with this email server, and whether you're the only user, or you're providing mailboxes to other users, and where you're sending/receiving emails to/from.


Tor was made by the US Navy and funded by the CIA. This is common knowledge.

Don't misinterpret this as it being a honeypot. They funded it because they actively use it "in the field".

Really though I think we should just start switching to Signal and Wire because email itself is a fundamentally insecure protocol that should be abandoned for the purpose of any meaningful communication and maybe only for creating other profiles and business related purposes. The truth is, if the feds want to see your emails, they can if you're self-hosting them or not. And even if you need one, avoid Gmail like the plague and use something different. But if you want optimal privacy, no email is best email.

 

[TheSkoomer]

Really though I think we should just start switching to Signal and Wire because email itself is a fundamentally insecure protocol that should be abandoned for the purpose of any meaningful communication and maybe only for creating other profiles and business related purposes. The truth is, if the feds want to see your emails, they can if you're self-hosting them or not. And even if you need one, avoid Gmail like the plague and use something different. But if you want optimal privacy, no email is best email.

Signal is not trustworthy, it uses your phone number as an ID, and your address book for contacts.

Session is a fork of Signal without phonebook access, all IDs are cryptographically generated and random.

 

[AmpleApricots]

emails are fine because they're incredibly simple and can be easily integrated into a lot of flows. If you don't want anyone to read your emails except the recipient, just encrypt the text. All that technology is old, tried and true.

In theory these corners of the internet always sound interesting and sometimes you even catch yourself thinking "maybe I can recapture some of the frontier spirit of the old web there." In practice it's all schizoposts, bitcoin scams and CP all the way down. The drugs can be fun sometimes I guess.

 

[TheSkoomer]

In theory these corners of the internet always sound interesting and sometimes you even catch yourself thinking "maybe I can recapture some of the frontier spirit of the old web there." In practice it's all schizoposts, bitcoin scams and CP all the way down. The drugs can be fun sometimes I guess.

FUD.
All the best communities on the dark web do not allow CP.

Visit Kelvinchan some time. It's slow but comfy.

 

[AmpleApricots]

All the best communities on the dark web do not allow CP.

Eh, maybe not full of CP but the rest still rings true. I don't need a rube goldberg machine of services to access websites to read people's hot takes on jews and socialists, the pandemic or generally being slightly edgier than A&N here. Sorry, just the way it is, most places just aren't that interesting. It's not the technology, it's the people. September never ended.

 

[Aidan]

@Sicklick What's your angle? You do this thing where you present a vague prompt and then let the relevant thread die off or, as in this case, you continue with further vagueness.
Your last post in this thread ultimately says nothing except for "email bad, use signal/wire" when you're the one who asked about setting up email on the darknet in the first place. So you don't trust email at all but want to know how to set it up is what I've gathered.

My point - What the hell are you actually trying to do? It seems like you're trying to become more private but it's not clear what your personal threat model even is and you beat around the bush so much that it's impossible for anyone to give you a straight answer.

eg this thread.
You present a vague question: "What is the best darknet in existence?" and then your first sentence in OP is...

Imo Tor is no more secure (or even no less secure) than any other network technology out there.

So you've already discounted Tor - what the hell are you getting at then? When asked why you're asking this, presumably so people are more able to help, you respond with a non-answer.

Pressing question

So what is it you're actually after op? Guns, drugs, child porn?

Your response

Some people use it for just private browsing online. Maybe that's why criminals also use it, but I'm no expert of course. Plus the regular internet is getting harder for maintaining non-PC content anyways, even the Daily Stormer moved to Tor. There's a million fucking reasons people would switch to Hyperboria/I2P. Glowies might be able to still catch you through there, but they most certainly can here too. What's your point?

You're like a bot.

 

[timewave0]

All I know is:
Drugs bad
Internet drugs good

 

[Sicklick]

@Sicklick What's your angle? You do this thing where you present a vague prompt and then let the relevant thread die off or, as in this case, you continue with further vagueness.
Your last post in this thread ultimately says nothing except for "email bad, use signal/wire" when you're the one who asked about setting up email on the darknet in the first place. So you don't trust email at all but want to know how to set it up is what I've gathered.

My point - What the hell are you actually trying to do? It seems like you're trying to become more private but it's not clear what your personal threat model even is and you beat around the bush so much that it's impossible for anyone to give you a straight answer.

eg this thread.
You present a vague question: "What is the best darknet in existence?" and then your first sentence in OP is...

So you've already discounted Tor - what the hell are you getting at then? When asked why you're asking this, presumably so people are more able to help, you respond with a non-answer.

Pressing question


Your response


You're like a bot.

Well, afaik email is not safe, but I just figured if someone could possibly self-host via I2P and communicate with the clearnet which could possibly be not too bad a solution, but I was apparently wrong about that.

 

[Frail Snail]

Well, afaik email is not safe, but I just figured if someone could possibly self-host via I2P and communicate with the clearnet which could possibly be not too bad a solution, but I was apparently wrong about that.

Your OP doesn't mention anything about self-hosting or e-mail. What's the goal here? If you are sending out mail to the clearnet from a server you host and only your client traffic is routed through some kind of anonymity network, its only use is to prevent the ISP from knowing what you are doing.

That aside, the most successful self-hosting solution for casual use that I heard of is people using Tor hidden services to access their machines at home when they aren't. Blocking every bit of traffic that doesn't come from the Tor network means you won't have 3 dozen IPs sniffing around your ports the moment you bring a server online and onion v3 addresses are long enough that an attacker isn't likely to guess it.

Eh, maybe not full of CP but the rest still rings true. I don't need a rube goldberg machine of services to access websites to read people's hot takes on jews and socialists, the pandemic or generally being slightly edgier than A&N here. Sorry, just the way it is, most places just aren't that interesting. It's not the technology, it's the people. September never ended.

Think of it as planning ahead. Right now there aren't a lot of topics or communities that require something like Tor or I2P, but it's better to figure things out in advance and have a small retreat than scramble and potentially lose a large chunk of your user base because of fuckups. Like when people migrate from clearnet to Tor and then figure out too little too late that having unique identifiers for posters isn't bad after all. You can say that it's fucking obvious, but not to Internet lolbergs.

 

[Slav Power]

If you want to buy drugs, Tor is the best.

If you want to easily share something via Tor, look at OnionShare.

If you want to create a private darknet between you and your friends, check out ZeroTier.

Somehow we got talking about SMTP servers after OP. If you just want to send encrypted emails with your buddies, but want a simple IM-style interface, look at Delta Chat. It has the side benefit of being impossible to take down or block, since it just uses regular email as a transport.

AFAIK ZeroTier is centralized on ZeroTier's servers. You cannot configure a ZeroTier network without going to their website. So it's definitely not a good choice privacy and redundancy wise, but if you just want to play some old games on a virtual LAN network then ZeroTier does a good job at that.

 

[Ghostface Killah]

i love glowposting

 

[Nick Gars]

I can't tell you.
They'll kill me.

 

[seri0us]