I think it’s safe to say that almost everyone reading this has heard about the dark web, or at least it’s most infamous site Silk Road (now defunct, having been shut down by the FBI). And if you know nothing about the dark web, apart from what you’ve seen in the media, then you can be excused for thinking that it’s only a place for all things pernicious, dangerous and illegal.
Google recently announced that they had indexed over 130 trillion individual web pages. These are web pages with publicly accessible URLs that are easily found through any search engine. A URL (universal resource locator) is the web address you type into a browser, for example thehindu.com. There are however trillions more web pages that cannot be indexed by search engines. This means you can’t find them or visit them unless you know the exact URL to go to, or you’re using some sort of specialised software. Some of these pages form the deep web and some of them form the dark web.
The terms dark web and deep web are often used interchangeably, but they aren’t the same thing at all.
You might not find a deep web page using search, but you probably access the deep web every day if you use an intranet, or access your work email through a browser. Certain parts of government websites, educational research archives and medical databases are all examples of deep web pages.
The dark web is completely different. It is a much more private part of the internet and requires specific software to access it.
The easiest way to think about all this, as many have said before, is to think of the proverbial iceberg.The visible tip is the world wide web that we know and love; the one where we can find our favourite videos, music, clothes and other things using any search engine. The deep web and the dark web are the much bigger hidden underwater bits that we can’t see. To see the deep web you’ll need to dive into the water (but you might need a thermal wetsuit, aka the URL for a site, or a password). But you won’t be able to see the dark web unless you have the right underwater goggles, aka the right kind of software.
The dark web is made up of many, many websites that make privacy their primary concern. The idea behind the dark web is that all traffic to and from its web pages is anonymised. Practically this means that all the web traffic to and from dark websites is so heavily encrypted that it is almost impossible to figure out who is visiting. And this means that people on the dark web can go about their business completely anonymously.
Compare this to the normal web, where cookies are constantly following you around. Your browser history is enough to give the cookie companies enough information on your likes, preferences, habits and much more besides. (There is an in-depth set of articles on cookies in the archives of this column.)
Although there are all kinds of nefarious goings on on the dark web, that’s not all there is on there. It’s also a place people who value their privacy like to hang out. The dark web is also home to book clubs, chat rooms, private email services and all sorts of other perfectly legal things.
The writer is a digital transformation and strategy consultant
