The Internet that you see, visit and access today is way deep than you can imagine. Consider the web to be an ocean of knowledge. The web you access is broadly divided into three main parts or components. These are:
- Surface Web
- Deep Web
- Dark Web
Contents
Surface Web – What you see is what you get?
The surface web is the part of the web that is at the top of the whole World Wide Web. The Surface web consists of about a billion websites that are up and running on the web. However, this part of the web comprises only 5% of content available to us. The surface web consists of all the websites and information that are indexed by the search engines and can be easily accessed by our regular web browsers. You can access all the web pages on the Surface web without any restrictions from anyone.
Most of the Surface web consists of static and fixed web pages. All these web pages are under the constant surveillance of a number of government agencies. The Surface Web has an estimated size of around 20 Terabytes of data.
Also Check: Top 5 Best Onion Browsers
Deep Web – The biggest part of the Ocean
To put it into simpler terms, all the information, files and records that you cannot access through regular search engines form the part of the deep web. The deep web forms about 90% of the total web content. All the content on the deep web are unindexed by the regular search engines and hence, deep websites are not easily accessible.
You can consider the Deep Web as the body of the ocean as it forms the whole base of the web. It is estimated that the deep web is almost 500 times the size of the surface web with the size of the whole deep web estimated to be 7500 Terabytes, according to some sources. Most of the information on the deep web is organized nicely because most of the content on the deep web are dynamically generated web pages.
Dark Web – The Sinister Area of the Web
This is the area of the web where everything gets serious. You may relate this area to the bottom of the Ocean. Also known as ‘Illegal Web’, ‘Black Web’ and by a number of other names, dark web forms a very smaller part of the deep web. It only accounts for about 0.03% of the total web resource. There are many reports suggesting that there are only about 700-800 websites on the dark web. However, most of the dark websites are the part where illegal business takes place.
This restricted part of the internet is well-hidden from the eyes of the world by an encrypted network such as TOR. TOR provides the base for the websites to run as the people on the dark web use the hidden services to ensure that their servers are well protected. You can find a number of peer-to-peer networks on the dark web.
The dark web has this sinister reputation because a number of criminal activities take place on this part of the web. You can easily find a number of paid assassins and killers on the dark web. The dark web was home to one of the most notorious underground markets for drug trafficking called the Silk Road. Besides, you can find people trading weapons and arms. There are a number of hackers also available on the dark web who can hack into practically any website on the web. To get to know more about the dark web, you can visit TheDarkWebLinks.com
Shadow Web
Most people consider this part of the web as a complete myth rather than a reality. The rumors of the existence of an even sinister part of the web existing called the “Shadow Web” online started with a story on /r/nosleepsubreddit where people claimed that you can watch live murders of people in exchange of money.
With the popularity of the story gaining by every passing day, a number of people started creating fake websites on TOR to scam people out of money. However, it has still not been proven to be real.
Also Check: Six SEO friendly Types of Content
Over to You
The Web is a mysterious place. You never know what you may come across. This is why you need to be cautious at all times, especially, on the deep and dark web. Most people only know about the surface web as it can be easily accessed by the web browsers.
Deep web and dark web are the part of the web which is well hidden from casual web users. They are not easily accessible to the general public and require the use of special software known as TOR to access them. TOR provides the whole web network with a system to access the “.onion” websites available on the deep web and dark web.
Leave a Reply