Because that’s impossible. The ever-shifting landscape of the dark web makes it impossible to crawl every site. One of the major differences between the normal web and the dark web, besides the multiple re-routes built between a user and a site, is the suffix of the sites themselves: sites on the dark web often end in .onion and have an incomprehensible string of numbers and letters before it. The last count of onion sites according to a 2017 Vice article was 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176. And it’s not unusual for a site to appear for 12 hours and then vanish. We can’t even count these sites accurately, never mind crawl them in any kind of reliable fashion.

What a site will do to “scan” for your information is likely to look at the latest data dumps: files of information that do often end up on the dark web.

If you do a scan, and your information is found on the dark web, here are a few things to remember.

• No service can erase your information. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. You should be leery of any service offering to erase your information.
• Consider account alerts. Early detection of fraudulent activity can help you limit losses.
• Mitigation is the name of the game. If you are alerted that your information is on the dark web, the best idea is to freeze your credit to limit fraudulent activity with your social security number. You should also order new credit and debit cards.
• Monitor your credit frequently. Look for any unusual activity so you can take swift action.
• Practice good security hygiene. Keep your data and passwords as private as possible. Read here to find out more.