The Deep and Dark Web

The term: "The Dark Web," invokes in many illicit activity, criminals, identity theft and hackers. While it does harbor criminal activity, the dark web forms part of a greater portion of the internet known as The Deep Web. 



Yes, the deep and the dark web are two different entities. The deep web represents parts of the world wide web that are not indexed by traditional search engines like Google, DuckDuckGo or Bing. That is, they do not typically appear in search engine results. Examples of such are password protected pages like those belonging to websites owned by banks or paid streaming services, websites intentionally hidden from web crawlers, messages exchanged between users on websites/web apps and comments on forums. This very blog is on the deep web.


The part of the world wide web that you and I see through our google searches is what is referred to as the surface web. It may not seem like it but the surface web is a only a small portion of the web. Over 90% of the web is made up of the deep web and only about 5% is the dark web; due to it's nature, it is difficult to know the exact size of the dark web


Simply put, any website that cannot be found via a traditional search engine belongs to the deep web. Since websites on the dark web are also 'hidden', they are part of the deep web. However, the dark web is different. Websites on the dark web have intentionally been hidden through a technology known as the Tor network and are only accessible through the Tor browser - the tor browser is also known as the onion browser due to the many layers of encryption that keep users on the dark web anonymous. 


Anonymity on the internet can be a lifeline for those living in oppressive regimes and whistleblowers. It is also vital for free speech and political dissidence. Unfortunately, the anonymity that comes the dark web means that those who intend to engage in nefarious activities will be drawn to it and thus, the dark web has gained notoriety for being a haven for a booming illicite economy fueled by the sale of drugs, stolen credentials, child pornography and the like.



You may be curious about how one goes about accessing the dark web and well, it is simple. Although, extreme vigilance must be exercised when surfing the dark web. To gain acccess, one has to first download and install the Tor browser on their computer. Websites on the dark web have domain names that end in .onion instead of the familiar .com or .org. Furthermore, their domain names are seemminly random string characters that are designed to be easily forgettable, for example http://76qugh5bey5gum7l.onion/ links to deep web radio.


So, why would one want to access the dark web? Well, as alluded to before, if you reside in a country that is under an oppressive regime or are a political dissident or you highly value anonymity, the the dark web may be the place for you. There is a trade-off though: the sophisticated encrytion service that keeps you anonymous also means that the Tor browser is painfully slow and websites on it are objectively less performant than their counterparts on the surface internet. To add to this, due to crackdowns by law enforcement, some websites have had to become dynamic and thus keeping track of their domain names has become difficult.


At this point, you may be wondering: who created the dark web and why did they create it? The Tor network is an ancestor of a project started by the US department of defense whose goal was to create an encrypted network upon which US spies could communicate anonymously. While the project would never come to fruition (as far as we know), it led to the development of the Tor network and thus the dark web we know and often misunderstand today

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