The Internet is a big place, and while most of it is bright and easy to explore, there are certainly some dark corners. Anonymity enables people to do all kinds of weird things online. Sure, there's plenty of trolling and other such nonsense, but there are also things that go a little deeper. Here are ten unexplained Internet mysteries that are still unsolved.
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Some of these Internet mysteries seem to be cover stories for recruiting incredibly smart people for unknown purposes. Case in point: Cicada 3301, which first appeared in January 2012. Starting as a call on the Internet for "intelligent individuals" with a hidden message encoded in it, Cicada has evolved into an insanely complex series of puzzles that fold in cryptography, data security and dozens of philosophical and cultural references. Allegedly people have followed the messages to their conclusion, but none will speak of what they found at the end or who the puppet masters behind the whole operation are. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)Clik here to view.
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The younger generation of Internet users might not remember Usenet, which was essentially a global message board system that started operation in 1980. Posters came from all over the world to share information, and it became home to several mysteries. One of the most perplexing is Markovian Parallax Denigrate, a series of cryptic messages that started in 1996. Each had the same title--those three words--but the content was different each time, an avalanche of impenetrable word salad. Tracing the email address used to post them led to Susan Lindauer, a woman who was arrested for working with Saddam Hussein's government. But she's never admitted to posting them, and the reason is still unknown. (Photo credit: Gizmodo)Clik here to view.
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When we use the Internet, we expect that our data is going to travel safely--emails get sent, websites get loaded, videos buffer. But this unexplained mystery highlights the fact that it doesn't always happen so easily. The phenomenon of "Internet black holes" has been investigated since at least 2008, but engineers are no closer to finding a solution. Packets of information are simply disappearing en route to their destination. Some believe that firewalls and dead IP addresses are to blame, but the volume of dropped traffic indicates that there may be other, still unrevealed forces at work. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
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It doesn't really take a lot of time or effort to set up a website, but to make one that captivates and puzzles people for years is a different story. Since at least 2003, 973-eht-namuh-973.com has been serving up a baffling array of text, images and other mysterious content to visitors, and we're no closer to understanding what the purpose of it all is. Closer examination of the site's content reveals links to numerology, ancient mysticism and other unusual subjects, but the identity of the site's creator is still not known.Clik here to view.
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Even the most ordinary websites can have mysteries associated with them. Take Reddit, for instance. It's a place for people to share all kinds of content, but it's also where a user known only as A858DE45F56D9BC9 has been posting strings of text and numbers each and every day since 2011. These posts still defy any interpretation or decoding, even after three years of activity, but thousands of Redditors watch them, analyze them and attempt to figure out exactly what is happening. Aside from the messages themselves, we have literally no other clues. (Photo credit: Reddit)
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Electronic mail has changed the way we communicate and connect with our loved ones, but it still has limits. Most notably, you can't send them after you die. Or can you? In June 2011, a man named Jack Froese died unexpectedly of a heart arrhythmia. His friends and family mourned and moved on, but Jack wasn't done. Five months later, one of his oldest friends got an email from Jack telling him to clean out his attic--a reference to a conversation the pair had before Froese's death. Other people got posthumous emails as well, all from Jack's personal account. Nobody knows who's behind it. (Photo credit: Youtube)
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Let's head south of the border for this next Internet mystery that has perplexed some of the most powerful men in Mexico. The Facebook page "Valor por Tamaulipas" was opened on the first day of 2012 to give voice to the drug-related violence in the Gulf state of Tamaulipas. The site routinely posts pictures of crime scenes and information about illegal acts. This angered the drug cartels, and they offered a $46,000 reward for any leads on the page's administrator. As of press time, the bad guys still haven't figured out who's behind this amazing one-man war on crime. (Photo credit: Facebook)Clik here to view.
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Here's another mystery that has captivated people for over a decade. In 2000, posts from a man named John Titor began showing up on Usenet and other message boards. Titor claimed to be from the future year of 2036, sent back in time to retrieve a computer that he needed to debug a number of UNIX legacy problems. Many wrote him off as a lunatic or someone trolling, but the dedication that "Titor" displayed towards keeping his cover story coherent was off the charts. His messages continued to be posted until 2003, when he disappeared. Curious minds have hired private investigators to look into his story but the true author of the John Titor messages remains unknown.
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The introduction of Bitcoin to the global marketplace in 2009 changed the way we think about money, but part of the fascination came with the cryptocurrency's unusual origins. The creator goes by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, which is in all likelihood an alias. Journalists have been digging relentlessly to find the real identity of the Bitcoin creator, but every lead has been inconclusive. In fact, Newsweek claimed the man pictured above, Dorian Nakamoto, was the mysterious Bitcoin creator, but he denied it. With the collapse of several Bitcoin exchanges and the gradual loss in value of the currency, Satoshi Nakamoto may have more reasons than ever to hide out. (Photo credit: Coindesk)
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Lastly, here's another mysterious website that, as of press time, has yet to be figured out. OCT282011.com is an oddball maze of quasi-scientific diagrams, intentionally broken pages, hidden text and more. The date referenced was one of the proposed ending dates for the Mayan calendar, but when October 2011 came and went, the mystery just deepened. One of the strangest things about the site is that its pages change frequently with no apparent rhyme or reason, requiring investigators to compare dozens of archived versions in their search for clues. (Photo credit: Abovetopsecret)