
Equipped with a VPN and Tor, one can easily find dark marketplaces where users can purchase everything from illegal drugs to bank account information, to children’s social security information. Citizens from countries such as China and Turkey where the internet is heavily censored rely on Tor to access the internet freely.īut that same ability to hide one’s location and identity makes the dark web a hotbed of illegal activity. Wilson adds that most dark web traffic isn’t from criminals it’s from users who merely prefer to browse the web anonymously. To access the dark web, users need special technology-technology that anonymizes and obfuscates browsing traffic,” explains Wilson.

“Content on the dark web is designed to be hidden not only from search engines but also from casual internet users one cannot simply stumble across a dark web site on accident.

Accessing the dark web requires a special browser that encrypts your identity and allows you to browse anonymously, such as Tor. Unlike the deep web, the dark web is a much smaller chunk of the internet that exists on an encrypted network. Far from being illicit, the deep web is deeply boring it’s a catch-all term for the millions of pages of password-protected internet that most of us access on a daily basis.īut as Wilson notes, criminal activity still happens on the deep web, such as phishing scams where criminals try to lure you to password-encrypted websites in order to steal your bank account details or other personal information. You don’t need a special browser or a VPN to access the deep web just any old browser and an internet connection will do. In short, the deep web describes everything from your online banking portal to your electronic healthcare records to your workplace’s intranet. When you log into your bank account, or your social media accounts, the content that is available to you as a registered user is the deep web,” said Emily Wilson, Vice President of Research at Terbium Labs, in an interview with the Daily Dot. “The deep web is made up of content that cannot be indexed by search engines this includes material that is accessible only behind log-in pages, or on sites that have restricted or blocked search engines from indexing their contents. Most of us actually access the deep web every day, whether it’s by logging on to Facebook or checking our email. Dark web vs deep web: What is the deep web? Luis Romero/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) But while both the dark web and the deep web are separate from the everyday internet that can be seen by anyone with a computer, that’s where the similarities end. Both may conjure up images of a murky corner of the internet inhabited by drug dealers, terrorists, pedophiles, and other criminals. To most people, the terms “dark web” and “deep web” may seem interchangeable.

The dark web vs deep web is a question that a great number of internet noobs wonder about.
