The deep web and its inner recess, the dark web — those less well-trodden parts of the internet beyond the reach of Google and Bing — are not for the faint-hearted or untrained. With the right tools, however, there's little to fear and plenty to discover. Here's how you can start exploring the deep web without having to worry about your digital well-being.

There are a few ways to approach this, but we're going to focus on one of the most straightforward and secure for simplicity's sake. We're going to be using Tails OS, a bootable operating system that includes everything you need to get down to those hidden parts of the web.

If you're still unclear about what the deep web is, it's any part of the internet that's not indexed by search engines. Anywhere you can't get from just clicking links. A large part of the deep web is made up of .onion sites (like the infamous Silk Road), which use a special top-level domain only reachable by a special browser called Tor. Technically, the dark web is a more illicit subsection of the deep web, though the terms are often confused.

For the curious or privacy-conscious internet explorer, it's worth checking out to see what lies beyond the internet we interact with on a day to day basis. But please note: you should be extra careful when clicking links on the deep web as some can lead to illegal sites. Browse at your own risk.