What Tax Professionals Need to Know about the Dark Web

This blog was last updated on March 11, 2019

If you don’t know much about the dark web, you’re not alone. Maybe 5 percent of internet users are on it (at a stretch), but it’s anywhere from 6 to 500 times larger than the consumer web. And it can definitely affect your job as a tax professional.

Anything and everything is for sale on the dark web–including tax information–so the dark web is the last place you want your tax information to be. In a new white paper, Sovos leans on the experience of Randy Johnston, security expert and founder of Network Management Group Inc., for a fascinating journey through the dark web and an explanation of what it is and how it works.

Unfamiliar Territory

This white paper answers all, or at least most, of your questions about what is sometimes also known as the deep web or darknet. It also offers some advice as to how tax professionals can keep, say, 1099 and W-2 information for going up for sale on the web’s dark side. 

The dark web, as it turns out, is home to the vices you’d expect–for sale, of course: weapons, drugs, stolen financial information, pornography and the like. But it’s also home to security researchers trying to determine ways to better protect both consumers’ and companies’ data, as well as to journalists connecting with clandestine sources in secret. Like the Wild West, the dark web has both villains and heroes. 

Staying in the Light

As it turns out, the best way to keep tax information off the dark web is through extreme diligence–and not just in terms of Internet security. In fact, some of the most effective methods for keeping data off the dark web have little at all to do with technology. 

Staying safe means keeping up to date with the latest advancements in tax information reporting and making sure you’re working with trustworthy people. There are other best practices, too, detailed in the white paper.