Darknet, dark web, deep web, surface web,
what are all these terms?
Don’t worry.
I’ll explain them one by one and also tell
you how the darknet is key to our privacy.
Starting with the surface web, it is the web
which is completely indexed by the search
engines.
Like, if you can access the internet, you
can access the surface web.
For instance right now while you are watching
my video on youtube you are accessing the
surface web.
Now coming to the deep web, it constitutes
of the 96% of the online content, the remaining
4% is the surface web.
The deep web is not indexed by search engines,
for example, if you want to shop online you
can simply search on any search engine like
google or bing and you will get a whole list
of different online shopping websites because
it is available on the surface web, but if
you want to know somebody’s credit card
number you won't get that on google, it's
not that easy.
Because that information is secured with some
password or encryption inside the deep web
which can only be accessed by the servers
the owner has provided access to.
So, in simple words, even when you are checking
your emails by logging into your account using
a password you are surfing the deep web.
Now the most important, the darknet or the
dark web, which are often used interchangeably
but there is a little difference between the
two.
Darknet refers to a network on the internet
whereas dark web refers to websites on the
darknet.
Darkweb is, so to speak, a subset of the deep
web that is intentionally hidden and requires
special browser like Tor to access.
Tor stands for ‘The Onion Routing’.
Like the onion is protected layer by layer,
so is Tor.
Let me give you a simple analogy suppose you
have a message which you want to be delivered
to your friend but before reaching your friend
it has to pass through 3 servers on its way.
Let us say A, B and C. The server A only knows
that something has come from you and it has
to be delivered to server B. Server B knows
that it has come from A has to be delivered
to C. The same is with server C it delivers
the message to the destination without knowing
that it has come from you and your friend,
then, has access to your message.
Thus each server in the network acts as a
layer of encryption for the message and only
you and your friend know what's inside the
message.
You must certainly have heard of the Dark
Web as the place of criminal activity and
it is but not to the extent we know it.
You will find all kind of criminal activities
like buying credit card numbers, illegal drugs,
guns or hacked Netflix account details.
Almost everything is there but that is not
the purpose dark web is even built for.
The Tor Project claims that out of 2 million
people who use Tor per day only 1.5% of them
visit the hidden sites.
The majority of Tor users are those who use
it just to protect their privacy.
In 2014, the Internet Watch Foundation found
31,266 URLs that contained child porn images.
Out of those URLs, only 51, or 0.2% were accessed
on the dark web.
That means the dark web is not the only place
of crime, the surface web is too.
It all depends on the way we use them.
As an analogy, would you allow a cop to break
into your house and rummage through your belongings?
Of course not.
But that’s just what's happening to your
computer and cell phone devices every day.
Even the most trusted apps take our data with
or without our permission and they can access
it at any time.
It is our right to protect our privacy and
for that, we need privacy and anonymity tools
at all times.
Tools like Tor and Virtual Private Networks
to protect our browsing history the way they
protect the darknet websites.
