Ahmia

Developed during the 2014 Google Summer of Code by Juha Nurmi with support from the Tor Project,{{Cite web|url=https://blog.torproject.org/tor-heart-ahmia-project/|title=Tor ♥ Ahmia Project: Supporting Google Summer of Code 2014|publisher=Tor Project|access-date=6 January 2025}} the open source.{{cite web|last1=Greif|first1=Björn|title=Gefälschte .onion-Websites spähen Tor-Nutzer aus|url=http://www.zdnet.de/88240605/gefaelschte-onion-websites-spaehen-tor-nutzer-aus/|publisher=ZDNet|access-date=4 August 2015|date=14 July 2015|lang=de}} Ahmia indexes onion websites on the Tor network.{{Cite web|url=https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2017/10/18/google-cant-search-the-deep-web-so-how-do-deep-web-search-engines-work/|title=Google Can't Search the Deep Web, So How Do Deep Web Search Engines Work?: Networks Course blog for INFO 2040/CS 2850/Econ 2040/SOC 2090|access-date=2019-03-07}} The search engine is open-source: the crawler component is based on Scrapy,{{Cite web|url=https://github.com/ahmia/ahmia-crawler|title=Ahmia Crawler: Open-source crawler for Ahmia search engine|publisher=GitHub|access-date=6 January 2025}} the index component is built with Elasticsearch,{{Cite web|url=https://github.com/ahmia/ahmia-index|title=Ahmia Index: Elasticsearch-based indexing component for Ahmia search engine|publisher=GitHub|access-date=6 January 2025}} and the website component is developed with Django.{{Cite web|url=https://github.com/ahmia/ahmia-site|title=Ahmia Site: Open-source website component for Ahmia search engine|publisher=GitHub|access-date=6 January 2025}}

Ahmia has a strict policy of filtering child sexual abuse material, and since October 2023, Ahmia has expanded its filter to include all sexually related searches, citing widespread distribution and search of child sexual abuse on Tor as the reason.{{cite web|last1=Nurmi|first1=Juha|title=Ahmia Legal Disclaimer|url=https://ahmia.fi/legal/|publisher=Ahmia|access-date=5 January 2025|lang=en}}

In a study in Scientific Reports explained the filtering policies for Ahmia and its role in combating the distribution of illicit content on the Tor network. The paper also acknowledged the contributions of the first author, Juha Nurmi, the creator of Ahmia as he expanded filtering policies in November 2023. According to the scientific publication, the decision to broaden content filtering was the result of the research findings, which showed that 11 percent of search sessions sought child sexual abuse material on Tor and that around one-fifth of onion websites hosted such unlawful content.{{cite journal |last1=Nurmi |first1=Juha |last2=Paju |first2=Arttu |last3=Brumley |first3=Billy Bob |last4=Insoll |first4=Tegan |last5=Ovaska |first5=Anna K. |last6=Soloveva |first6=Valeriia |last7=Vaaranen-Valkonen |first7=Nina |last8=Aaltonen |first8=Mikko |last9=Arroyo |first9=David |title=Investigating child sexual abuse material availability, searches, and users on the anonymous Tor network for a public health intervention strategy |journal=Scientific Reports |date=2024-04-03 |volume=14 |pages=7849 |doi=10.1038/s41598-024-58346-7 |pmid=38570603 |url=https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-58346-7 |access-date=2025-01-06|arxiv=2404.14112 }}

The service partners with GlobaLeaks's submissions and Tor2web statistics for hidden service discovery{{cite web|title=About us|url=https://ahmia.fi/about/|access-date=3 August 2015}} and as of July 2015 has indexed about 5000 sites.{{cite news|last1=Leyden|first1=John|title=Heart of Darkness: Mass of clone scam sites appear|url=https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/07/dark_web_cloned_site_scam_resurgence/|access-date=3 August 2015|publisher=The Register|date=7 Jul 2015}} Ahmia is also affiliated with Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Rights, an organization that promotes transparency and freedom-enabling technologies.{{Cite web|url=https://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/10376/how-to-search-deep-web-tor/|title=The new search engines shining a light on the Deep Web|date=2014-09-28|website=The Kernel|access-date=2019-03-07|archive-date=2020-03-27|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200327053319/https://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/10376/how-to-search-deep-web-tor/|url-status=dead}}

In July 2015 the site published a list of hundreds of fraudulent clones of web pages (including such sites as DuckDuckGo, as well a dark web page).{{cite news|last1=MacGregor|first1=Alice|url=http://thestack.com/hundreds-dark-web-mirror-booby-trap-tor-010715|title=Hundreds of Dark Web mirror sites 'booby-trapping' Tor users|access-date=3 August 2015|date=1 July 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150720011457/http://thestack.com/hundreds-dark-web-mirror-booby-trap-tor-010715|archive-date=20 July 2015|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|last1=Marwan|first1=Peter|title=Anonymität von TOR-Nutzern durch Fake-Websites gefährdet|url=http://www.itespresso.de/2015/07/14/anonymitaet-von-tor-nutzern-durch-fake-websites-gefaehrdet/|publisher=ITespresso|access-date=4 August 2015|date=14 July 2015|lang=de}} According to Nurmi, "someone runs a fake site on a similar address to the original one and tries to fool people with that" with the intent of scamming people (e.g. gathering bitcoin money by spoofing bitcoin addresses).{{Cite web|url=https://www.businessinsider.com/hundreds-of-spoofed-websites-show-up-on-the-dark-web-2015-7|title=Someone is creating fake websites on the dark web to try to lure in and hack people|last=Weissman|first=Cale Guthrie|date=July 2, 2015|website=Business Insider|access-date=2019-03-07}}

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