OnionCity: A Search Portal for the Deep Web
Many consider the absence of indexes and search engines critical to the definition of the "Deep Web". Yet that doesn't stop some projects from trying to offer specific mechanisms to find information amid all that digital chaos. OnionCity presents itself as a simple, albeit insecure, portal for global search and access to .onion sites on the Tor network.
The number one tool to access the Tor network is the Tor Browser, a Firefox-based browser developed by the same people who keep the anonymous network alive. To be honest, the Tor Browser makes the whole process very simple, but the first thing the Tor network and the Deep Web in general demand is conduct. The plan is to reduce the footprint, not make it bigger with massive downloads or insecure services. Still, some users agree that an anonymous index would be useful. Once inside the Tor network, there are dedicated stops like the Hidden Wiki, but some people just want a quick look. For them, OnionCity exists.
How OnionCity Works
On its surface, OnionCity looks like any other search engine, but in reality it works as a Tor2Web proxy, presenting the content of hidden .onion sites that have decided to "show themselves", with a slight change in their domain (.onion.city). OnionCity was presented last week, and since then it has registered just over 650 thousand sites. OnionCity maintains a relatively aggressive cache update, and if the original portal disappears, the search engine will remove it from its index within days. Another point to highlight is that OnionCity is based on a custom Google search. Therefore, if someone wants to stay out of reach of OnionCity and other search engines, all they have to do is add the appropriate robots.txt exclusion to their .onion portal, and throw a 403 to any request with the "x-tor2web" header.
Privacy Considerations
In other words, it's best to interpret OnionCity as a window to the Tor network. Windows let us see, but they are not necessarily safe. OnionCity hasn't even implemented HTTPS in its searches, meaning all information between the user and the cached .onion site can be intercepted at will. In the name of convenience, OnionCity sets aside some privacy and anonymity issues that many might prefer to keep... but who would be crazy enough to do something illegal with OnionCity?
Official Site
For more information, visit the official site.
