What Is the Deep Web?
How secure do you feel on the web? It seems like every day there are more revelations about the government tapping your phone calls, reading your email, and watching what you do online. In this week’s episode, Tech Talker will be talking about the dark side of the web that Google won’t show you.
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What Is the Deep Web?
The internet is huge. I’m sure many of you know that, but it’s almost unbelievable that when Googling the term “cat videos” that Google can serve up nearly a billion hits from all across the web. Now keep in mind there are 7 billion people on the planet. It’s mind boggling.
But what if I were to tell you that Google and other search engines can only search a fraction of the web. This number varies from source to source, but the most generous term that I’ve heard is that Google can search about 10% of the world wide web. So what’s in the other 90%?
Well I can assure you it’s probably not another billion cat videos!
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What’s in the Deep Web?
This other 90% of the web goes by many different names: Dark Net, Invisible Web, Dark Web, Deep Web, Deep Net…
Just keep interchanging the words, “internet”, “web”, “dark”, and “deep”, and you’ll come up with all of the “names” it falls under. For the sake of this episode I’m going to try and explain what these terms mean. Because the very nature of this stuff is widely unkown means that it often lacks official names. I’ll try and use the most well-known terminology, but just keep in mind these terms change often and are known by many different identities.
This other side of the internet is made up of a ton of different things. The broadest part of this side of the web is called Deep Web, Underweb, or Invisible web, this is basically everything that today’s search engines can’t make sense of. For instance, there’s a lot of database information, dynamic content (like temporary webpages) and other obscure data that sites like Google don’t deal with. It’s pretty much that junk drawer in your house where you stash all of your random stuff (or in this case the Costco-sized warehouse full of random stuff).
Within this obscure jumble of stuff is what’s called the Darknet. Now if the internet were like a big outdoor shopping mall, this side of the web would be like a dark back alley. There are many things this side of the internet has to offer, anything from drugs, hit men, and pirated content, to evangelists of free speech, privacy minded individuals, and even its own marketplaces.
One of the largest markets in the Deep Web was recently shut down by the FBI, and this marketplace was called the Silk Road. This underground website has been described as the dark Amazon or eBay where you could by a ton of illicit material.
The FBI arrested the individual who ran the site, and have since taken it offline. In order to buy many of the items on the site users would deal in Bitcoins, which I’ve talked about in an earlier episode.
Many people thought that the shutdown of the website would spell doom for Bitcoin, because of its heavy use there. However, just the opposite has happened. Since the shutdown Bitcoin prices have shot up due to an increased legitimacy of the currency as well as it shedding its ties to any shady business deals.
Why Is Deep Web Still Around?
You might be wondering, “Okay, nothing about this sounds good. So why the heck is it still around?”
Well for one, the websites and traffic is anonymized over the internet. Traffic hops from server to server, which obscures the original source. I explained how this works on my episode on keeping your traffic private using TOR. This makes it extremely difficult to take anything down, because it’s next to impossible to find where the website is being hosted.
More and more individuals are looking to the Darknet to make their internet communication anonymous and often it’s for completely legitimate reasons. Defectors of many regimes and political activists often communicate over this network when their internet activity is monitored in their county such as in the Middle East and China.
Even American citizens are starting to utilize the technology given the recent NSA snooping revelations.
The amount of users is also growing because of how easy it is to access software that allows you onto these back alley networks. For example, the TOR browser I mentioned earlier comes preconfigured to access much of this dark content.
The takedown of the Silk Road is the most recent in a string of other Darknet takedowns that have happened since this last August thanks to the FBI. There have been many attempts to track and shut down most of the Darknet, but as with most things it’s a game of cat and mouse between the authorities and the individuals running the network.
It will be interesting to see what the future has in store for the Darknet!
With that here are you 3 Quick and Dirty Tips for the internet sites Google doesn’t want you to see:
- The Deep Web makes up almost 90% of the internet and is comprised of information that search engines can’t make sense of.
- The Darknet is a smaller portion of the deep web that individuals can anonymously browse using specialized software.
- Interest has been growing in this mysterious world given the recent FBI takedown of the Silk Road and the increased awareness of government snooping.
Well that’s all for today!
Have a question about anything in this episode? Or a suggestion for a future podcast? Send me an email at techtalker@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email or post it on the Tech Talker Facebook wall.
Until next time, I’m the Tech Talker, keeping technology simple!
Dark internet image courtesy of Shutterstock.
