The Dark Web Has Shrunk By 85% (bleepingcomputer.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: The number of Dark web services has gone down significantly following the Freedom Hosting II hack that took place at the start of February, and only consists of around 4,400 services, according to a recently published OnionScan report. Previous research published in April 2016 by threat intelligence firm Deep Light had the total number of Dark Web services at around 30,000. Comparing the two numbers, the report shows a decrease of over 85% in the overall size of Dark Web in the last year alone. According to the recent OnionScan statistics, the Dark Web is laughably small, with around 4,000 HTTP websites, 250 TLS (HTTPS) endpoints, 100 SMTP services, and only 10 FTP nodes.

Comments

Not all activity is illegetimate

[DrYak]

It doesn't make sense that 85% of them suddenly stopped being greedy and slimey all of a sudden.

Every criminal thinks they will never get caught, or has already resigned themselves to the idea that it is part of the game. Some might have closed up shop, but 85%? I highly doubt it.

Not 100% of what goes on the dark web is criminal.

Take tor as an example:

Yes, some of them use .onion tor web services for the purpose of hiding ethically-dubious criminal activities.
(silk road used to be an example back then).

BUT, some use them for very practical reason like evading censorship (though it is *still* considered illegal in some specific jurisdiction, globally it's not and it's hardly unethical).
The popular Duck Duck Go search engine also has a .onion tor server.
If you're in China, and want to get informations about Tibet or the Tiananmen Massacre or simply about Taiwan, you can't through a normal search engine. They are either blocked in China or collaborate with the government and only report government-approved informations.
On the other hand, if you have access to the tor network (along with VPNs that's one of the few popular solutions to get around China's Great Firewall) you can search the web using Duck Duck Go's onion tor server. (And then read the source using your tor socks proxy).

As needs come and go, or because ressources are limited, some of these non-criminal dark web site are going to disapear.