The dark web is a secret network of websites that can only be accessed with a specialized web browser. It is used to maintain the privacy and anonymity of internet activity, which is useful for both legitimate and illicit uses. The use of it for extremely criminal activities has also been reported, even though some people use it to avoid government censorship.
What is the dark web, deep web, and surface web?
There are millions of websites, databases, and servers that are all active around-the-clock on the vast Internet. However, the sites that can be accessed using search engines like Google and Yahoo are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the so-called “visible” Internet (also known as the surface web or open web). The non-visible Web is surrounded by a number of terminologies, but if you’re going to venture off the beaten track, it’s important to understand how they differ.
The surface web or open web
The “visible” surface layer is the open web, often known as the surface web. The open web would be the top part that is above the sea if we were to continue to picture the full web as an iceberg. According to statistics, this group of websites and data accounts for less than 5% of the entire internet. These are all frequently visited public-facing websites that can be accessed with conventional browsers like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox. Websites are typically identified by registration operators like as “.com” and “.org” and are simple to find using well-known search engines.
Because search engines can index the web through visible links (a technique known as “crawling” because the search engine moves through the web like a spider), it is possible to locate surface web websites.
The deep web
The deep web rests below the surface and accounts for approximately 90% of all websites. This would be the part of an iceberg beneath the water, much larger than the surface web. In fact, this hidden web is so large that it’s impossible to discover exactly how many pages or websites are active at any one time.
Carrying on with the analogy, big search engines could be considered like fishing boats that can only “catch” websites close to the surface. Everything else, from academic journals to private databases and more illicit content, is out of reach. This deep web also includes the portion that we know as the dark web. Although a lot of media sites interchangeably refer to the “deep web” and “black web,” a large amount of it is completely secure and lawful. The following are some of the deep web’s largest sections:
- Databases: Both openly and secretly accessible file repositories that are only accessible within the database itself for searching are available.
- Intranets: Internal networks are used by businesses, governments, and educational institutions to coordinate activities secretly within their institutions.
It’s likely that you already utilize the deep web if you’re wondering how to access it. The phrase “deep web” refers to all websites that search engines cannot recognize. Deep-linking websites might be protected by passwords or other security barriers, while others might simply instruct search engines not to “crawl” them. These pages are more obscured without obvious linkages for a variety of reasons.
The “hidden” stuff on the deeper web in general is more dependable and clean. The deep web includes everything, even pages you access when you bank online and blog posts that are now being reviewed and redesigned. Furthermore, they don’t endanger your computer or general safety. To safeguard user data and privacy, the majority of these pages are restricted from public view on the internet,. Read more about What is the Deep and Dark Web.
- financial accounts such as retirement and banking
- accounts for social media and email
- databases for private businesses
- HIPPA-sensitive information, such as medical records
- legal records