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If you know anything about data privacy and protecting yourself from identity theft, it’s easy to mitigate these risks on the deep web. In fact, you probably already do it whenever you log in to a secured website. Instead, it is a collection of secret websites that are not accessible through standard web browsers. However, the roots of the Dark Web can be traced to some technological innovations from the U.S. government.
No one really knows the size of the dark web, but most estimates put it at around 5% of the total internet. Again, not all the dark web is used for illicit purposes despite its ominous-sounding name. Medical records, fee-based content, membership websites, and confidential corporate web pages are just a few examples of what makes up the deep web.
How To Access The Deep Web
What’s known as the dark web exists within the deep web; it’s an area of the internet that is only accessible by users who have a Tor browser installed. In general, most average internet users will never need to access content on the dark web, although it is perfectly legal to use Tor. Everyone from identity thieves, financial fraudsters, money launderers, drug cartels, murderers for hire, and human traffickers buy stolen data on the dark web.
- Whether you’re browsing the surface web, the deep web or the dark web, Hancock said the same advice applies — proceed with caution.
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- Because the dark web is largely unregulated, never visit dark websites without first confirming their authenticity.
This will open what looks like a very traditional web browser. Making sure you’re connected via HTTPS is one solution to this problem, as is using a virtual private network. If you’re gonna use the Tor network to access the deep web — or the surface web for that matter — make sure to install one of the best VPNs to protect yourself against malicious exit and entry nodes. The fundamental purpose of the deep web is to provide a way for people to browse the internet and host websites without the potential for being tracked or monitored. This is especially relevant in countries with draconian censorship laws such as China.
Dark Web vs. Deep Web: Uncovering the Difference
About 80% of its web traffic is related to accessing child pornography despite it being difficult to find even on the dark web. A website called Lolita City, that has since been taken down, contained over 100 GB of child pornographic media and had about 15,000 members. You might use the dark web if you live in a country in which the government censors or spies on online activity.
A comprehensive approach to enterprise threat intelligence should include monitoring both of these channels for emerging cyber attacks and potential indicators of compromise. In addition to being accessed exclusively through specialized software, resources on the dark web are also hidden from search engines. Because of this, the dark web is technically a subset of the weep web that belongs to the category of software-gated pages. Malware – Malicious programs, including software exploits, rootkits, and viruses can be purchased or downloaded from the dark web and used by digital threat actors to launch cyber attacks. The deep web simply refers to the pages on the internet that are not indexed in search engines. In other words, you can’t find them when you perform a search within a search engine like Google.
Darknet Sites
Malicious actors use the Dark Web to communicate about, sell, and/or distribute illegal content or items such as drugs, illegal weapons, malware, and stolen data. Many news organizations operate on the Dark Web to protect confidential sources. Millions of regular internet users access private databases such as email inboxes and credit card accounts daily. These pages are not indexed by search engines and are protected behind security walls, authentication forms, and passwords on the deep web.
This means that if you do anything illegal on the dark web and are unlucky enough to be routed through one of these nodes, the authorities will be well aware of what you’re doing. In theory this should make your deep web browsing entirely private from interlopers. However, since your traffic is routed through nodes that you don’t have any control over, you are at the mercy of whoever operates these nodes.
How To Get Onto Dark Web
It is now one of the most common browsers used to access the dark web, using databases to help people make their way around and find the information they need. At the moment, the Dark Web is defined as a layer of information and pages that you can only get access to through so-called “overlay networks”, which run on top of the normal internet and obscure access. You need special software to access the Dark Web because a lot of it is encrypted, and most of the dark web pages are hosted anonymously. The Tor browser — which stands for The Onion Routing — will keep your online activity anonymous and let you visit websites on the dark web. The challenge, though, is that you must know the website addresses you want to visit.
You’ve no doubt heard talk of the “dark web” as a hotbed of criminal activity — and it is. Researchers Daniel Moore and Thomas Rid of King’s College in London classified the contents of 2,723 live dark web sites over a five-week period in 2015 and found that 57% host illicit material. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s hidden, just that it’s stored different than the surface, indexed content. A search box on an e-commerce site, for instance, wouldn’t be part of a list of Google results.
