What is the difference between the dark web and the deep web?

Dark Web Vs. Deep Web

• Deep Web:

The concept of the deep web is simple.

The deep web is that part of the network that contains material, information and web pages that are not indexed in any of the existing search engines such as bing, google, yahoo, etc.

So in the hypothetical case, that search engines could index the entire content on the web would mean that the deep web would disappear.

• Dark Web:

Behind the anonymity of the censor-resistant platforms, Dark Web has flourished a thriving trade of all that is illegal and unacceptable in civil society. In their book Cryptopolitik and the Darknet, researchers Daniel Moore and Thomas Rid claimed that around 57% of the Dark Web includes illicit content. From contraband substances to automatic assault weapons, from the disturbing imagery of gore and child abuse to hired assassins, you can find just about anything and everything listed on the many thriving marketplaces on the Dark Web, if you know where to look.

Silk Road Homepage Image Link

https://i0.wp.com/beebom.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Silk-Road-KK.jpg

Yet, a large part of the darknets manage to stay within the legal and/or ethical boundaries for the most part and is certainly worth checking out. In case you’re interested, the first place you should look at is, of course, the Tory platform. Tor hosts a vast majority of the websites on the Dark Web, so it is, understandably, the best place to get started if you want to see for yourself what the fuss is all about. You can get a detailed tutorial on how to access the Dark Web in one of our earlier articles, so you should definitely check that out if you want to know more.

If you are worried about the legality of Tor and wondering whether you can get into trouble for using the software, rest assured that merely surfing the Dark Web isn’t going to get you into any legal trouble as long as you stay away from partaking in illegal activities while in there. But then again, that warning is also equally applicable on the regular web, so it really isn’t any different in this case.

What can we find in the deep web vs deep web?

• Deep Web:
• Content stored by the governments of different countries.
• Organizations that store information. For example, NASA stores information about the scientific investigations it carries out. Other information stored may be meteorological data, financial data, directories with information on people, etc.
• The multitude of databases of different kinds. The databases represent a very important% of the information stored in the deep web.
• Forums of diverse themes.
• Dark Web
• Drug sales.
• Pornography.
• A black market of assassins.
• Documents classified as, for example, those of WikiLeaks. (Well I would say that this bad is not.)
• Crackers forums in search of victims.
• Phishers, spammers, botnet agents, in search of victims.
• Pages to buy or manufacture weapons.
• Piracy of books, movies, music, software, etc.

Note: It should be noted that 90% of content that exists in the deep web is accessible to all users and 10% of content that exists in a Dark web is safe to access.

The Internet is divided into 3 parts, i.e- 1.Surface Web

2. Deep Web and

3. Dark Web

1.Surface Web:

Let me tell you one thing, if you are reading this blog then you are exploring the surface part of the web. The websites, web pages and information that you find using a web search engine like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Normal users are restricted to use only the surface part of the web. The shocking thing is that the surface web is only 4% of the whole internet!!

2.Deep Web:

The content that you cannot find using the search engine is termed as deep web.

In simple terms, there are places in a web that cannot be accessed by search engines but can be accessed if you have an address. The online cloud storage like Google Drive, Dropbox etc. cannot be accessed without a specific address or URL and any sort of authentication processes like- specific id, password etc. Confidential information on a Government or a University or any organisation is stored in the Deep web.

96% of the whole internet is Deep Web.

3. Dark Web:

The data that are purposefully unrevealed and is not attainable through any standard web browsers is termed as Dark Web. Dark Web is mostly used for illegal activities. The content inside Dark Web is usually found using the Tor network. Drugs trading, Arms trading, Illegal Paypal account details and many more things that one cannot even imagine, are available over there. Dark web is termed as hackers' paradise. One should not visit the dark web ever. Dark Web was invented for the purpose of US NAVY but now it's used as the black market of the Internet.

The surface web consists of all web-based content that can be found in search engines. The deep web is everything else. The dark web is content not found in search engines that can only be accessed anonymously using special anonymous software networks.

We all use the internet every day but websites that are found through search engines are the only makeup of .03% of total pages available, the remaining 99.97% of the internet is made up of un-index pages. This Deep web is consist of everything online including passwords, private archives and many more.

The Deep web is often confused with the Dark web but they are two very distinctive things. The deep web is the entire web that is not accessible by conventional search engine but the dark web is a certain website within the deep web that is linked to criminal activity and illegal marketplaces.

You have to use a special browser to explore it, two of the most common browsers are Freenet and Tor.

Both are designed to disguise your IP address and keep you anonymous why surfing the deep web.

Freenet was invented by Ian Clarke in 1995 as part of his degree at University of Edinburgh.

Tor which stands for The Onion Router is based on Firefox and is run exclusively by a group of volunteers. The browser disguises the user's IP address by bouncing signals around numerous computers all over the world, this makes it always impossible to see who is actually viewing the material.

Tor also gives users the option to run their own hidden services like website routes that can only be

viewed using Tor, some argued this is what led to the development of dark web in the first place.

The dark web is known for hosting some of the world illegal markets including the most famous one; Silk-Road that was shut down in 2013 but another drug marketplace "Atlantis" was discovered advertising on YouTube.

Alongside drugs, these items like guns and weapons are easily accessible. Counterfeiting personal documents is also extremely popular with passport, birth certificate and social security number (SSN) ready to buy. Contract killers are also easy to hire, the target can be taken out in 1 to 3 weeks but typically they cannot be children under 16 or high profile politicians.

The dark web is home to extremely hardcore pornography and active Pedophilia communities and message boards.

Some of them require the sharing of Pedophilia images in exchange for continued membership.

In 2014, studies discovered that 80% of dark web usage on Tor was connected to Pedophilia despite only 2% of Tor hidden services being related to child abuse sites. Other sexual mores are catered for including cannibalism, there are sites that describe how to kill and cook a human and some of them also provide instructional videos of butchered people.

There are also regular rumours of pay-per-view tortured streams, these so-called red rooms are described as live tortured streams where the audience can request such an act to be performed on the victim for a price but there is no such evidence this site actually exists.

But these arguments are not the darkest content on the dark web.

In 2015, Australian Peter Gerald Scully arrested in connection to the creation and the distribution of

films that show the rape, sexual assault, torture and murder of children some as younger as 18 months.

But it is not just criminals that utilize the deep web.

In 2015, the FBI ran the world biggest child pornography site on the dark web, operation "Playpen" was the FBI's plan to track down paedophiles that use the dark website Playpen.

After tracing the site location to North Carolina, the FBI moved the service to Virginia where they continued to keep the site opened for additional 13 days.

Although the FBI did not upload additional images, the site was already contained 23,000 explicit images of children and received over 100,000 visitors whilst the FBI running it. Operation Playpen allowed the justice department to uncover 1,300 IP addresses from the site. From this, 137 people have been charged with child pornography or paedophilia crimes.

But this is not the only time the FBI has got to be involved in the dark web, in 2014 they worked with 17 other nations in operation "Onymous", this targeted illegal websites that were selling drugs, guns and credit card details that resulted in 17 arrests on the season of $1Million in Bitcoin as well as 400 URLs which is about 27 websites.

In 2015, the NASA on the US government began working on what they called Google for darknet, the search engine which is known as "MEMEX" will be able to index and identify certain activity patterns on the dark web, it aims to uncover crime brings by looking for patterns of advert posted from certain areas or for recurrent telephone numbers.

Crucially, MEMEX will be able to check video, images and pop-up adverts as well as texts. On average, 360,000 Americans accessed the deep web through Tor each day but they are not all using the horrific contents we discussed.

Tor is frequently used by journalists to contact whistle-blowers and the decedents to ensure their safety from their governments. People who live in oppressive regimes where state regulated media will also benefit from using data encryption.

Many other people simply use the deep web to test website before they are indexed and appear on the surface web. Other use it to ensure that website designs do not get stolen.

What's more even the US government uses the deep web as part of its day-to-day operations in the Middle East. US Navy branches use Tor for open source intelligence gathering without revealing the governmental IP address.

Final Thought:

While the dark web is the source for immense evil and depravity, the deep web offers anonymity that can aid law enforcement and civilians across the world. But it is worth remembering that as part of operation "Onymous", the FBI manage to infiltrate the supposedly completely anonymous Tor network, this means along with MEMEX, the deep web may not be so hidden after all.

Technically, “DEEP” and “DARK” are independent concepts in terms of the Internet. A site can be neither, it can be “only deep”, or “only dark”, or both.

Begin by considering the non-deep, non-dark web as the “Open Web”. An open website allows anyone to connect and view content, including search engines. Hence, you can find them or their content with a search engine, and you can connect to freely peruse their pages. This makes them “non-deep”. If someone is monitoring network traffic, they can see that you are visiting these sites (even if you use HTTPS or end-to-end encryption) because the packet headers include the source and destination addresses, from beginning to end. The packet contents (payloads) might be encrypted, so the eavesdropper may not know what is being viewed, but they can know that you (or at least, your home router address) is visiting the site. This makes them “non-dark”.

People or companies that set up “private” servers that will not allow anyone but selected members to connect and visit are “deep sites”. Sites that put up “paywalls” (some news sites, for instance) are the “least deep” - you cannot immediately get to most of their content unless you subscribe (and pay). But of course you can get to their “sign-up” page for free (duh) or else they would not get many paying customers. The “deepest” sites will not even acknowledge your attempt to connect, or even acknowledge they exist if you do not come from one of the IP addresses on their “member list”. I can host my family photos on a website server at (say), 111.222.222.111 (if I owned that address), and ONLY allow my family members (IP addresses) to visit, and totally ignore all packets from any other addresses (even ICMP “pings”) from being acknowledged. Someone could tell you the address, but it would do you no good (assuming I have made it hack-proof by shutting down ALL other services, and use a firewall to block other access, etc.) Such a site is VERY deep. But again, it is NOT dark, because a network eavesdropper (an ISP, or someone operating a mid-path traffic router) could still see that my family’s IP addresses are connecting to 111.222.222.111, and even see that you are attempting to connect to it, and failing.

(CAVEAT: You could send packets that forge my family’s source IP address, and my site might allow you in - but anything it sends back would be directed to my family’s systems, not your true address. If you are the eavesdropper and are positioned along the return path, you could see the content if it is not encrypted. I could guard against this by using encryption. In fact, I could even prevent you from spoofing my family’s IP addresses in the first place, by demanding that the connections authenticate with private keys you do not possess.)

Now, if I wanted my private site to be DARK (as well as DEEP), I would only allow (say) the IP addresses of TOR network exit nodes to access (connect) to my private server, and I would require that my family members use the TOR browser to connect to the server. This will prevent an eavesdropper from being able to tell (from my family’s side of the network) where they are going because the intended packet addressing is now an encrypted part of the payloads. All the eavesdropper would know is that my family is connecting to TOR. At the exit-side of TOR, all an eavesdropper can learn is that “someone somewhere” is visiting my private server. They cannot know whether it is my family, or someone else. All they can know is that some “TOR user” is visiting my site. It is this “un-traceability” of endpoints that make these sites “DARK”. Note that I must use some kind of session authentication (password, etc) in order to know that it is my family that is visiting (keeping my site “deep”), and not a stranger, since (by address) even I only know that a TOR user is visiting.

Finally, I can even change my website from “private” to PUBLIC, so that it is no longer necessarily “deep”, and it can still remain DARK. I can publish my “dark” address publicly, and I can allow ANYONE to visit, so long as I require that they use the TOR routing system (as I will still only allow connections to my server from TOR exit nodes.) This will allow the public to use my site anonymously.

In summary: A site can be

• Open: Content publicly accessible, addresses visible
• Deep: Content privately accessible, addresses visible
• Dark: Content publicly accessible, addresses hidden
• Deep&Dark: Content privately accessible, addresses hidden

I hope this clears things up, from a technical definitions perspective.

Internet or the web which we generally see through google is not the complete one.The web pages displayed by the search engines are indexed with them , that means they are somewhat verified amd safd to visit. But web does not end here. There are many websites available which are not indexed over Google, but do operate in the internet.

These websites are present in the darker corners of the internet called as Deep Web.Deep web generally consists of leaked documents or confidential files of some organizations. Although its not legal to visit in the deep web but simply surfing over here does no harm. Some media agencies do browse the deep web to get some confidential database for investigation purpose.

Now going more deeper we reach the Dark web. Now unlike the deep web simple browsing too is not safe here. It's the storehouse of Black hat hackers , and apart from that you will find drugs , guns , hitmens and all sort of illegal activities over here. There are websites called RED ROOMS where people are tortured or womens are raped live on the webcam.

The entire transaction over this area of the internet is through BIT COINS.

So for the sake of your well being do not ever try to visit this section of internet just out of curiosity.

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