Where do I begin? Its been given a bad reputation and a lot of attention in the last few years and for the wrong reason. But there are many inaccuracies surrounding the deep web.

The deep web is a search term for accessing content that is available in the world wide web but cannot be found using conventional search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. These conventional sites can be used to only search for content in the surface web that are indexed by the standard search engines I just mentioned. Anything that you can find using these normal search engines accounts to only five percent of the available content online. The other 95% of which can be accessed only by the deep web. This is only an estimate though that the surface web and the deep web are growing at a ridiculously large rate but it shows that when you google something, you just scratch the surface of the information that is out there which when you think about it, is a scary thought.

So what is on the deep web that isn’t available on google? Well, it contains databases, stand alone pages and documents that are within private networks like educational materials, journals and legitimate content that the owner chooses to hide. They are non-indexed sites that are or registered or picked up by the search engines. If you have used the internet database whilst at work, there is a good possibility that you have used the deep web.

The deep web is widely used by companies and shouldn’t be confused with the Dark Web. The Dark web is when you go deeper into the networks of the Deep Web and it is here where anything goes.! The main way people get into this is by a network called Tor (The Onion Router). A web browser that allows you to browse anonymously and access sites ending in “.onion”. Now these secret websites ending with “.onion” first emerged in the late 1990s and actually used by the US Navy as a way of anonymous communication of sensitive material by using numerous layers of security and encryption so that the user’s identity or location cannot be traced.

Now tor does have its uses. For example people who do not want to be tracked by the government for good reason use tor to anonymize their web activities. But sadly due to its anonymity, it has become a place for dark market and illegal activity. One of its most famous sites was an online drug site called “Silk Road” created in 2011 that was called the eBay of drugs. It was one of the most viewed sites on the deep web and allowed people to buy any drug they wanted using bitcoin making it very hard to track. It was shut down in 2013 when a lengthy search for its creator Ross W. Ulbricht. At its closing the site had generated over 1.2B$ in sales and made Ross around 80M$. But the dark web has a lot more than illegal drug markets. Passports and IDs can be purchased, firearms, explosives, computer viruses used to compromise security and hack personal data. You can also buy personal data and it is thought that high profile figures like President’s information can be found there. But examples of some of the more disturbing things that can be found is a guide to cook a woman. This is no joke and is a comprehensive guide on how to cook a human being. You can also buy endless amounts of counterfeit goods and currency and hit-man. There are many more gruesome things that you can find there but i won’t be explaining about them.

Thankfully countries have launched cyber crime units to tackle the illegal activity that goes on in the dark web. So to answer the question of what can be found on the deep web, the answer is pretty much anything. It is also being used by terrorists to communicate with each other. Although recently a terrorists’ site was hacked by a group of people who are affiliated to the hacking group Anonymous.

So why cant the dark web just be shut down? Well, its not that easy. It is not feasible to simply shut it down. With the anonymity of tor where most of the dark sites are makes it almost impossible to track black market activity since nothing is traceable and the money and expertise needed to shut it down, is not going to happen. Silk Road founder was found because of traces in the surface web and the site was shut down by the FBI because of some intense investigation and tracking that remains an FBI secret.

But although you feel anonymous down there, if you download or click on something that you shouldn’t it could have some bad consequences because you never know who can hack into your system and stories of people’s webcam being hacked are endless.

So the deep web has its uses, but its the dark web where things get really bad. To end this, I would like to say that this post is only for educational purpose and I hope that it hasn’t made you to consider browsing the dark web because that is not the intention of this post. Doing so might get you in some serious trouble.!!!

Share your thoughts down in the comments section. I would love to read them. Share this post, like it if you enjoyed and follow my blog for the latest updates of all things mysterious!!