The Privacy Protection You Need for the Dark Web and Beyond

How the IDX CyberScan tool proactively monitors all layers of the web to protect your personal information against compromise

If your personal information were to become compromised as part of a data breach, you’d want to know immediately. Not weeks or months after the fact, but right away, so you can take quick, decisive action to prevent identity fraud.

That’s the premise behind CyberScan from IDX. Included with IDX Privacy and IDX Identity memberships (and available in a free email-monitoring trial), CyberScan is a surveillance engine that continually monitors all layers of the web—from the surface web we all use, to the dark web where cybercriminals roam—to alert you if your personal information has been put at risk.

For your own privacy protection, it’s important to recognize exactly where the threats reside and how to use CyberScan to proactively defend against them.

Understanding the Layers of the Web

Today’s web is sometimes compared to an iceberg: There’s a small part that we experience “above the surface,” while the vast majority of it lies below, not accessible by search engines. You could also look at it as having multiple layers, like an onion. Let’s use the onion analogy to peel away the various layers of the web—and explain how CyberScan monitors each one.

The Top Layer – Surface Web: In short, this is the part of the web that’s visible to search engines like Google and DuckDuckGo. It’s where we spend our time reading, shopping, browsing, and connecting on social media channels. As immense as the surface web can seem, it represents just a tiny fraction of the content and data hosted on the entire web. Part of CyberScan’s mission involves searching the surface web to see if your data has been compromised, which could mean exposure to cybercriminals.

The Next Layer – Deep Web: This layer is not searchable by search engines, and includes any content or service that requires you to log in with a username and password for access. It constitutes the vast majority of data found online, such as email, online banking, chat and messaging platforms, paywalled content, and streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. CyberScan searches the deep web for incidents of what’s called “data leakage,” where an organization or company accidentally leaves your data unprotected.

The Deepest Layer – Dark Web: This is the web’s underbelly, home to encrypted sites that can’t be found through traditional search engines or browsers. (In keeping with the onion analogy, domains on the dark web end with .onion instead of .com.) Accessible only via special software called Tor, the dark web is designed for untraceable, anonymous activity. While this anonymity can be used for good—whistleblowers, investigative journalists, and others often gather here to fight corruption and organize against repressive governments—it also makes the dark web a haven for cybercriminals, who use it buy and sell everything from illegal pornography and drugs to personal information stolen from data breaches. Just one example: The owners of one of the dark web’s largest credit card fraud rings decided to “retire” recently after generating approximately $358 million from the sale of stolen data.

An eye-opening number of data breaches have occurred at financial institutions, retailers, and other organizations in recent years. As a result, there’s a strong possibility that your personal information—things like your credit card number, Social Security number, email addresses, or account usernames and passwords—will eventually wind up for sale on the dark web, exposing you to the risk of identity theft and other scams. This is where CyberScan’s capabilities are especially valuable.

CyberScan: An Early Warning System Against Identity Theft

CyberScan uses a mix of advanced technology and human expertise to identify new breaches and assess the risks involved. It continuously searches 14 billion records across open web sources, underground forums, black markets, and other locations on the deep and dark web, alerting you if your personal information has been compromised. Every piece of data is meticulously checked for accuracy and authenticity to ensure that you won’t receive any false alarms.

Beyond its thoroughness, CyberScan delivers timeliness. While many people go weeks or months before discovering they’ve become victims of identity fraud, CyberScan offers the advantage of sending alerts immediately after a breach is detected. This gives you an opportunity to act ideally before fraudsters can use your information to commit crimes.

Getting Started with CyberScan

As part of a free trial, simply enter your email address, and CyberScan will search all layers of the web to determine if your email has been compromised in any known data breaches. You’ll see results in a matter of seconds. CyberScan will continue to monitor your email on an ongoing basis; you’ll receive alerts if any new breaches are found.

Monitoring your email is important, but it’s only part of your personal data profile. If you have a membership in IDX Identity or IDX Privacy, you can log in to add more of your information for monitoring—such as your name, address, date of birth, phone number, Social Security number, medical data, and financial data. CyberScan will continually search and send you alerts as the latest threats emerge. You can add new information at any time from your dashboard.

What to Do If You Receive an Alert

If CyberScan sends you an alert, it’s not a cause for panic. While it’s virtually impossible to get your information removed once it’s available on the dark web—not even law enforcement agencies have the capability to do that—there are important steps you can take to prevent or limit identity thieves from swooping in. Each CyberScan alert includes recommended actions like freezing your accounts, locking your credit, changing passwords, or setting alerts on transactions or login attempts.

Remember that cybercrime follows a typical sequence: 1) There’s a data breach involving your personal information; 2) your breached information is offered for sale on the dark web; and 3) criminals buy your information to commit identity theft and other fraudulent acts. By using dark web monitoring technology like CyberScan, you’ll give yourself a fighting chance to prevent that final, most damaging act from occurring. Consider it an essential part of your identity and privacy protection toolkit.