Dark Web

The term "dark web" does not have one specific defined meaning. The term has been used to describe different things over the course of the existence of the modern Internet. The term is mostly used for marketing hype. Companies attempting to sell you Internet security software, identity theft protection services, or financial monitoring tend to use the term "dark web" in an ominously ambiguous place on the Internet or separate from the World Wide Web where all the criminals hang out like the worst part of a major city.

The dark web misnomer is predominant in popular culture and media.

The term dark web is not synonymous with deep web.

What is the Dark Web

• The installation of Fiber Optic cable to be used for Internet traffic that was never activated due to factors including lack of funding and owning entity financial bankruptcy. Fiber optic cable uses light rather than an electrical current or rf to transmit data. If the cable is not used, there is no light, and therefore the cable can be observed as being dark (or without light.)

• Internet resources that cannot be searched and indexed by Internet search engines such as Google due to factors including the requirement of authentication credentials, private network routing, or firewalls blocking indexing. More correctly this condition should be referred to as "Deep Web" rather than Dark Web.

• Specifically restricted areas of the Internet sometimes used for illegal activity, such activity being on the spectrum from copyright infringement through to intellectual property distribution, personal identify information and other more serious criminal activity. Again, these are sites on the public Internet that cannot be searched and indexed by search engines such as Google due to blocking technology.

What the Dark Web Isn't

• The Dark Web is not one specific logical thing. It is more of a marketing term used by non-technical people in an attempt to sell and market privacy services or identity theft services.

• The Dark Web is not a separate Internet. It is not a separate World Wide Web.

• The Dark Web is not entirely and specifically all illegal activity. There is legitimate and legal information on the so called dark web that is simply not indexed by the major search engines for one or more reasons.

• The Dark Web can contain horrifying images and information such as the so called "Snuff Films," however, this is stuff that exists on the Internet, and calling it the dark web is not saying that it is on a different place than the Internet. It is on the Internet, but you won't find this disturbing content easily or by using a major search engine such as Google. Again, the dark web is not separate from the Internet or World Wide Web.

Deep Web and Dark Web

The deep web is a term to describe all of the Internet connected networks, web sites, and services which are not indexed by major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. They may not be known to exist simply because the Internet is so extremely large. There is far more content online than that which is known and indexed by the major search engines. Search engines only index and search common Internet protocols such as http which makes up the World Wide Web.

In other words, you have to "dig deeper" to find the deep web.

Furthermore, there are Internet connected networks which have restricted access blocking Internet search engines and indexing services. Public access to an Internet connected network or web site may be completely blocked by encryption, authentication mechanisms, and firewall technology. In this case you have to dig deeper by getting a password from someone or being granted access.

There are reasons that Internet connected networks are not searched and indexed by major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Direct access to these networks may be purposely restricted by the owners. To consider why these networks may have restricted access requires understanding the the Internet actually is.

The Internet is made up of many connected networks and nothing else. All of the many networks connected together using standardized routing and addressing technology make up the Internet. Web sites are driven by web servers on networked computers in which the network itself is connected to the Internet. The World Wide Web is not the same thing as the Internet, but merely one of the many technologies that uses the Internet.

Not all networks are connected to the Internet. The ones that are not connected are called "private" networks. Those that are connected to the Internet with some degree of unrestricted access are considered "public" networks. Company owners may wish to have the advantages of having their network connected to the Internet, with restrictions for security purposes. If an Internet connected network cannot be accessed at all by the general public without applying authentication tokens of a type that prevents automatic indexing then this network is considered to be at a "deeper" layer than typical public networks on the Internet.

Restricted networks on the deep web that cannot be automatically searched and indexed by major search engines such as Google but have legitimate or legal content in addition to the many unknown public networks not yet discovered by indexing services all as the majority of the deep web. Many of the restricted places are used by companies to share information with satellite locations, company partners, subscription based users, or other restricted audiences. The rest are just undiscovered Internet networks.

The minority of deep web networks that contain illegally distributed intellectual property, copyright media, the sharing of evidence of criminal activity, illegally obtained personal identify information, banned or restricted media, and information on buying or selling illegal material may be the contemporary more common use of the term "dark web." Access is restricted to these places making up the dark web by the perpetrators in an effort to avoid capture and criminal prosecution. They are either trying to hide on the dark web, or their data exists on the dark web but it has yet to be exposed to the general public.

An individual that wants to sell something that is against the law to sell, yet find a market, is challenged to advertise in a way that will not result in capture and prosecution. The goal of these criminal elements is to share information on web sites and other Internet mediums which are not indexed by Google and the major search engines. These criminals wish to be anonymous but still able to make connections to transact business. They wish to be found by their customers without being found by the police. This is of course impossible so therefore a real "dark web" that only the bad guys can use doesn't exist. In this context the dark web is simply a place common people tend not to be able to find, and crooks tend to use to conduct illegal activity, but is still part of the overall Internet.

• The general public doesn't know how to find the dark web and therefore does not use it
• The tricks and knowledge to find destinations on the dark web is known only to those criminals using it, law enforcement investigating the criminals using it, and the technically savvy overly curious seeking to understand, and sometimes expose it.

Swimming in the dark web, even just out of curiosity, can get you on a government watch list. The US government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been working on tools to automatically monitor the dark web. It isn't just a matter of knowing how to access things on the dark web, but how to anonymously access the dark web so one does not become the victim of crime or subject of investigation just for being curious and poking around a bit.

Dark Web Illustration

Illustration of a simple example might be made by describing an online forum. There are many online forums that people can register and join in order to post questions or provide information on topics. Typical forums can be read without registration. However, an online forum that cannot be read or otherwise accessed without registration would be deeper than a typical public forum. If the forum operator does not provide any public registration mechanism then it would be yet deeper. If a group of criminals used this forum to communicate about their criminal activity and only provided login access to one another then it would be very deep, and perhaps part of the so called dark web.

A small group of criminals with their own online forum which is secure enough to resist being hacked and compromised may continue to have success in facilitating their illegal activity as long as no single member of the criminal group "rolls over" and becomes an informant. Law enforcement invasion into this example dark web forum could only be achieved by obtaining access by (A) intimidation of one of the criminal users, (B) forcibly breaking into the forum using cracking techniques that exploit a security flaw in the forum, or (C) ordinary carelessness of one of the forum participants exposing information necessary to achieve access (via A or B) relating to police cooperation or cracking the server.

Although a real and practical example it should be noted that a web based Internet message forum with restricted access is not a common component of the dark web. The more serious the criminal activity the more obscure the technology or medium being used to communicate or transact business the criminals will utilize. Lesser known or newly developed communication protocols might be used. The strongest forms of encryption will likely be implemented. Access based on your physical location might be incorporated so that even with the correct username and password, unless you are on a specific machine in a specific place you're still locked out.

The dark web can get so dark it is without metaphoric light, and the content might dwell in the depths of the unimaginable. With great effort trying to find your way onto the dark web and stumbling into the wrong area might expose you to risk such as those associated with what you found coming after you. There are things online that are so dark and disturbing that it can change your very outlook on life. However, this is the reality of the Internet and whether you refer a specific area of the Internet with the pop culture term "dark web" or not, the reality is that the Internet contains everything from the extreme good to most deplorable bad. Fortunately for you the extremely dangerous is very deep and obscure so that you're not going to accidentally take a wrong turn winding up on the run from a mob hitman and the FBI because you mistyped one letter doing an Internet search. Life is not a Doug Liman movie and the dark web is just a small sliver of the Internet that you'll probably never even come near.