The Internet or World Wide Web is really made up of three different webs. The surface web, the deep web, and the dark web.
The surface web is everything that the general public generally accesses and the information is publicly available through a search or typing a URL into your browser.
The deep web, sometimes referred to as the invisible web, is all of the content that is not indexed by search engines. It’s mostly content that is not accessible to the search engine because either the website prohibits indexing telling crawlers not too or the page requires a login in order to access the information.
According to some estimates, the deep web is 500 times larger than the surface web.
The dark web, however, is totally different. It’s a tiny fraction of the web that is only accessible through specialized software such as the Tor browser. The term “dark web” is also often used to refer to the “darknet”, used to anonymize communications and obfuscate both the origin and destination of internet traffic.
Who uses it?
Since the main characteristic of the dark web is to provide anonymity, it’s appealing to a number of bad actors. The dark web is a doorway to shady and illegal activities, such as child pornography, the sale of drugs, firearms, and stolen credit card numbers.
However, while the dark web is used for some not so nice purposes, it’s also being used for many other activities that are mostly legitimate (although not necessarily legal).
Edward Snowden, the famous whistleblower who exposed the U.S. government’s mass surveillance program, used the dark web to send information to reporters and media outlets.
Journalists and activists also use the dark web to avoid being tracked by governments or other foreign and domestic actors that might want to do them harm should sources be compromised.
In countries where the government restricts access to specific websites and social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, dark web tools can help circumvent censorship.
How do you access it?
The most well-known tool to get on the dark web is the Tor browser. With Tor, you can access websites whose address ends with the .onion extension. These are websites that are exclusively available on the dark web and can’t be accessed through normal browsers.
