What is NotEvil? A Look at the Dark Web’s ‘Moral’ Search Engine

This article examines NotEvil, a self-described moral dark web search engine, detailing how it crawls Tor sites, claims to filter illegal content, and provides anonymized links, while emphasizing opaque filtering criteria, limited coverage, potential manipulation, legal uncertainty, and persistent risks like malware and phishing. It outlines basic use (install Tor and locate the current address), weighs benefits (familiar interface, potential access to whistleblower content) against drawbacks (false sense of security, technical hurdles, unverifiable operators), and offers safety tips such as maintaining anonymity, exercising caution with downloads and links, and phishing awareness; overall, it concludes that NotEvil may simplify navigation but cannot ensure safety or completeness, so users should proceed carefully or favor surface-web alternatives when possible.