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The Dark Web

The Dark Web

Idris Lawal's photo
Idris Lawal
·Jun 9, 2019

Many internet users do not really know what the dark web is. Many believe the internet is all about Google, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Twitter and the likes. It might interest you to know that there is a large portion of the internet that is not indexed by search engines or crawled by the likes of Google bots. Let’s take a look at this one after the other. The terms to be treated here are: Dark Web, Deep Web, and Dark Net All three terms are used interchangeably by some who are only a little informed about the subject.

What is Dark Web?

The dark web is a combination of websites which are on an encrypted network and are hidden from the general internet. These websites use anonymity programs to mask their location and hide personal information of the owners. Some of the most commonly used anonymity programs are TOR, I2P and others. These programs route the websites through various multiple servers on different location so as to make them untraceable.

People use the Dark Web for a multitude of reasons, although, the most common involves crimes. The Dark web is a playing ground for all kinds of drug dealers, malicious hackers, pornography, and even hitmen. Since it gives anonymity, government agencies find it difficult to track down the location of these criminals on the web.

Also, the are some good uses of the Dark web, it gives those who are persecuted in some countries the platform to get their word out to the world without being traced and hunted, Journalists also use to communicate securely with their informants in countries cracking down on press freedom.

The Deep Web

The deep web combines all web pages that are not indexed by search engines e.g. google. The deep web also includes but not limited to the dark web. Websites on the internet have pages which are not published, search engines don’t crawl such pages, hence they are part of the deep web. This makes the deep web even more voluminous then the accessible web. Currently 90-95% of the internet constitutes the deep web.

The Dark Net

Also part of the deep web, the dark net are majorly used by scientist and researchers where they dump loads and loads of unconcluded and semi-concluded researches, not yet meant for the outside world.

How to access the Dark Web

The dark web can only be access by the joining the network, most commonly TOR network. By download the TOR browser, a user can access the dark websites. The websites have not proper naming system due to encryption and end in .onion, they look like->, xvgwy3ge.onion, and they are usually down due to government scrutiny.

The article is meant only for educational purpose, you probably shouldn’t go wondering around the Dark Web. It can be harmful.