DarkWebAware: A Descriptive Quantitative Study of Students, Online Dark Web and Its Related Online Risks

Dark web is an obscure part of the internet which offers the anonymity and privacy to a user but also subjects a user to unlawful activities such as cybercrime, black marketplace and sale of dangerous goods. Although there is a reasonable amount of literature regarding the technical and criminal aspects of the dark web, a little is done on how students as one of the most active online communities perceive its existence and its associated threats to the online space. The current paper, DarkWeb Aware focuses on the awareness, attitudes, and perceptions of the students towards the dark web and how parental guidance influences the online activities. Open-ended questionnaires based on a descriptive-qualitative approach were used to administer questionnaires to the 100 college students of Technological University of the Philippines-Taguig. A thematic analysis revealed that there were some prominent trends in the sources of awareness, misconceptions, and interest in the dark web. The findings have shown that most students first read about the dark web through social media, with most mentioning the criminal that can lead to false knowledge or potentially harmful interest. Ignorance as to what the dark web was all about was very high with most of the students viewing it as a more dangerous space than a privacy device. Parents were not so aware or supervising. The results have shown that there is significant lack of co-relation between parental and student digital literacy and online student participation. The paper concludes that the digital literacy levels in schools and homes should be enhanced to enable the young generation to have safer and informed online behaviors.