If you think that everything is covered under the Google search engine, then you are wrong because Google only knows 4-5 percent of the internet and the rest is hidden and the internet is bifurcated into surface, dark, and deep web. But you might have a question that what is dark and deep web and whet it is legal or not.
Have patience, because in this article I am going to discuss each and every aspect of the dark and deep web. You’ll grab good stuff of knowledge after you completely read this blog.
Do you know there are three layers of the internet but I am sure that you haven’t heard about this concept before?
Table of Contents
Topics to be Covered
Well, I’ll cover the following Topics in this article: –
- Surface Web
- Deep Web
- Dark Web
- Access the Dark Web
- What is Onion Browser
- Deep Websites
- Difference Between Dark and Deep Web
- Download Tor Browser
- Access Dark Web on Android
- Origin of Dark Web
- Real Story
Infographic by: dashburst
What is Surface Web?
When a crawler makes a search on any Search engine then the contents displayed in a readable form is the surface web. Basically, he can read, access, and view the contents. Nothing is hidden from the user. But get your facts clear because whatever you see on Google, Bing, or any other search engine is just a part of 4 percent of the internet and the rest 96 percent is hidden. So you must be eager to know where it is hidden. Here the concept of dark and deep web originates. Before you know what is dark and deep web, clear your concepts about the surface web.
Deep Web
The deep web is the opposite of the surface web and therefore the content which is invisible and hidden from the major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. is known as Deep web. Google has the authority of only 4 percent to the internet and the remaining part of the internet is either encrypted or protected by passwords. The second layer of the internet is the deep web.
Deep web contents are hidden from the Google search engine because they are protected by password and the Google can’t access them without a password. The deep web is not illegal because you are also using a deep web like uploading pictures on Facebook with privacy enabled, sending a secret email by using a third-party email client, etc.
There are a lot of examples of the deep web but in a layman term, any content protected with a password comes under the deep web. But there are some exceptional cases in which content is not protected with a password but still, they come under the deep web. Keeping a special IP and Encrypting the content prevents the search engines from accessing the content.
How Google has Entered the Deep Web
Google doesn’t appreciate the contents hidden from it, therefore it has introduced a lot of free services like Gmail, Chrome, Google Docs, Google Drive, and many such things to track the user and unhide the contents. So if you think that your content is hidden from google then I suppose it is not. Google is smart and it doesn’t want to keep the locked database, therefore the reason for free services is to unhide the data.
Dark Web
The third layer of the internet is known as the dark web or the dark internet because it involves all the illegal activities from drug dealings to contract killing. Ammunitions trade, kidnapping, and many heinous crimes are done with the help of the dark web. The interesting point in the dark web is that it is only accessible with special software.
The mysterious part of the dark internet is Mariana Web which includes many unsolved mysteries therefore it is quite challenging for global law bodies to track the untraceable online activity happening on the dark web.
The acceptable currency of the dark web is Bitcoin because the sender and the receiver are untraceable but tracking the bitcoin transactions becomes difficult because of mixing services and making the transactions completely hidden.
The dark web doesn’t use the common extensions like .com, .org, or any other extension, instead of which they use .onion extension. This extension is inaccessible in normal browsers and the user needs a special dark web browser in order to access the website.
Case
Silk Road was an online drug dealing market place whose website was http://silkroad6ownowfk.onion, launched in Feb 2011. In a week it became famous and had started doing illegal business. Later on, the site was shut down by FBI in the year 2013. Then after a month the second version of the website was launched named Silk Road 2.0 but it was too shut down by the FBI. But according to some rough sources, it is found that the Silk Road 3.0 is there on the dark web.
What is the Difference Between Deep and Dark Web
| Basis | Deep Web | Dark Web |
| Portion of Web Content | 96% of all Content on Web | Some Portion of the Deep Web Content |
| Hiding Intension | Hidden Unintentionally | Hidden Intentionally |
| Accessibility | Accessible via Normal Browser | Inaccessiblein Normal Browser |
| Legality | Maybe Legal or Illegal | Always Illegal |
| Anonymity | No Anonymity | Full Anonymity |
Access Dark Web
As I have told you before that you’ll need a special browser to access the dark web therefore you can use the TOR browser for accessing the dark web. This browser anonymously communicates over the internet and it is a medium to the access of dark web and therefore any user can download the TOR browser from the official website torproject.org and for android download Orbit: Proxy with TOR.
The full form of TOR is The Onion Router because it is like an onion having many layers of encryption which is difficult to crack. The several layers of encryption make the browser slow, so whenever you use this browser, you’ll experience slow speed.
The websites with .onion extensions are only accessible in the TOR browser and the dark web or the deep web contents will appear in the readable form.
Let’s Take an Example
You can’t access https://facebookcorewwwi.onion in a normal browser because it has a .onion extension. It will be only accessible in the TOR browser. Basically, it is a home login page of Facebook created for TOR users.
For further information, you can even visit thehiddenwiki.org which has the list of many .onion websites divided into multiple categories. DuckDuckGo is a special search engine which you can use for finding the hidden content of the internet.
Origin of Dark Web
The origin of the dark web took place in the US so that the spies can easily exchange any kind of information anonymously. Later on, the US Military developed the TOR browser in the Mid 1990s and made it public so that everyone can download it.
The reason for making the TOR browser public was to create anonymity on the web and when the thousands of users use the same browser the government can easily send their messages easily. Now I suppose you know what is dark and deep web. I want to tell you a real story which is connects the dark web.
Real Story of Dark Web
There are thousands of incidents which took place around the world just because of the dark web. You may find many stories on the web, some of them are exaggerated and some are real.
A 20 Years Old girl was trapped by a sex trafficking group known as the Black Death Group. She was bought on a fake promise of a photo shoot and was harshly tortured by the group. Later on, it was found that the Black Death Group kidnaps young girls and then they auction them on their websites. The users used to buy those girls.
It is bitter to hear such stories but it is a real incident.
Conclusion
Now I would like to wrap up things. As I have told you each and everything about Dark web so I hope you don’t make any illegal use of the knowledge which I have delivered in this article. I hope now have good knowledge about the deep and dark web.
You May Also Read:
-What is the domain name system and how it works?
-The difference between http and https protocol and how it works?
-Learn about SSL Certification Process and how to choose SSL Certificate for Website
