
The biggest selling point of the dark web is anonymity, so pretty much anything you would want to purchase or consume anonymously is right there at your fingers tips. Things like book clubs and social networks.īut let’s be honest, you’re not here for any of that. But there are also plenty of normal, legitimate things on the dark web, too. Sure you can find online black markets where you can purchase illegal drugs, weapons and possibly even traffic in people. The dark web, despite its name and its reputation, is not inherently dark. The dark web is a part of the deep web, yes, but the dark web exists on networks that can only be reached by the use of specific software that obscures both user identities and the identity of the host. Pages, domains, internal networks and other IPs that exist beyond the reach of standard search. However, there exists a ton of walled off content online, too. This is how search engines crawl the web, too. If you think about how you use the internet, your browser serves as your de facto portal to the web and everywhere you go is by virtue of search, entering the URL yourself or clicking a link. The Deep web is just the portion of the internet that exists beyond the reach of search engines. That’s what divides the 5-10% of the web you can see, the Clearnet, from the 90-95% you can’t, the deep web. Additionally, everything on the Clearnet is very easy to find because it’s all capable of being indexed by search engines.Īnd being indexed is a big deal. Though the surface web is taking steps to remedy this, the general lack of encryption means that your activity can be tracked as if it’s occurring in broad daylight. It’s sometimes referred to as clear because of the level of transparency available there. With the iceberg example, you have the very small portion of the berg that exists above the water – which is visible to everyone – and that’s the surface web or clear web. The best metaphor I’ve seen for explaining the surface web vs.

The dark web is made up of content and sites that exist on darknets, or overlay networks that use the internet but require the use of specific software and configurations to access. We’ll cover all those questions and more today as we Hash Out: what is the dark web? What is the Dark Web? But what is the dark web, exactly? Who uses it? How does it work? When most people hear “Dark Web” it strikes up about the same understanding as the phrase “black market.” And that’s actually appropriate because on today’s internet, the dark web functions in many ways as a black market.

In Hashing Out Cyber Security The dark web is the place where the search engines can’t find you
