14 DAY TRIAL // In a joint announcement, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) have agreed to recognize .onion as a special-use TLD (Top Level Domain).
This doesn't mean you can register .onion domain names at your local money-hungry domain registrar, .onion being in the select company of other special-use domain names like .localhost, .local, .test, .invalid, .example, and the mother of all special-use domains, .arpa.
Previously, .onion domain names only worked on the TOR network, and in recent years have become almost identical to the "Darl Web" moniker, where many sites exclusively functioned, using a .onion domain, and harboring the activities of many criminal groups.
The biggest advantage of having .onion recognized as a special-use domain is that Tor users can now enjoy a little bit of more privacy.
No more government agencies snooping around in DNS servers
Previously, all Tor users wanting to access a .onion domain would query DNS servers for information, which would respond that such domain did not exist.
This left footprints in DNS server logs which have been used to identify users with a Tor connection trying to access the Dark Web.
Now, after the IETF and IANA's decision gets implemented in software products, computers will now ignore Web queries to a .onion domain, and forward users directly to their local Tor software without sending a blind DNS query over the Internet.
SSL certificates can be issued to .onion sites once the decision is approved and finalized
This announcement preserves the privacy of Tor end users, but it also means webmasters operating sites over .onion domains will also be eligible for receiving SSL certificates.
Of course, all checks still need to be passed with Certificate Authorities. Details on the proper procedures are documented in Ballot 144 of the Certificate-Authority & Browser Forum.
The two men behind this push to get .onion recognized are security researcher Jacob Appelbaum, and Facebook engineer Alec Muffett.