Deep Web, Dark Web, which is which?
September 11, 2016
After reading a number of scaremongering articles in the press[1] [2] which demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the difference between the Deep Web and the Dark Web; this article aims to educate you when talking with colleagues or clients.
Surface Web – If you can get to a website via Google you’re on the surface web. This includes your favourite supplier of news, recipes, cat photos, and a plethora of ‘not safe for work’ content. The surface web is well understood, and is generally free of too many nasties – although there are still pirate sites hanging on and a few other surprises.
Deep Web – The Deep Web is anything search engines like Google can’t find. This might sound sinister, but generally it’s not. Your company intranet, finance databases and shared drives aren’t on Google, but are accessible by employees via the internet. They’re part of the Deep Web. Some estimates put the Deep Web at 500 times the size of the Surface Web.
Dark Web – This is the special one. Normally when you use the internet it is a bit like a phone call; your internet provider can see that at a certain time you “called” a specific web-site. The Dark Web however obscures this log to hide what you’re doing from your internet provider (and governments etc…). Taking the telephone analogy further; imagine you phone a hotel, and ask to be put through to another hotel, then ask that hotel to put you through to the web site you want to access anonymously. Someone looking at your phone bill would see a call to the first hotel, and nothing more. This hides your who you’re talking to, the Dark Web then uses encryption to hide what you’re saying to the end recipient. Because of these protections the Dark Web hosts lots of illicit content; drugs, guns and terrorism.
You need special software to access the Dark Web[3], so you can’t use it by accident. The technology was actually created by the US government for military purposes, and later for journalists and political dissidents in repressive regimes. Sadly it’s declined into lots of illegal activity, and is generally best avoided. Interestingly in 2014 Europol arrested a number of people involved in illegal anonymous market places, potentially finding a weakness in the way the Dark Web works – so it may not be as anonymous as it once was!