The Web You Do Not Know Of.

We are fortunate (or unfortunate - depends on how you view it) to be living in the age of the World Wide Web. Not a day goes by without us having to use our search engines to browse the internet. It could be to catch up on the latest news or to identify that song you heard on your commute back home. One such search engine has overtaken the rest to such an extent that it’s name is now synonymous to the very act of web surfing.

GOOGLE.

Google wants you to believe that the world is at your fingertips and for the longest time in my life, I believed it too. It’s hard to think otherwise.

Almost everything you need is advertised to be just one Google Search away. Extra emphasis on ‘Almost’.

But how much of the internet does Google actually have access to?

The internet contains at least 4.5 billion websites that haven’t been indexed by search engines - Maurice De Kunder (A Dutch Web researcher)

The term Deep Web refers to these 4.5 billion websites that aren’t available to our search engines. The websites that are available to the search engines are broadly classified as Surface Web.

Now, it's not deep like sad, non-rhyming poetry, nor is it deep like the unexplored depths of the ocean. The deep web is actually so accessible that you use it every time you check your email. What sets it apart is that its sites can't be reached via search engine. You need to know the URL or have access permissions to view a deep-web site.

“Let me Google that for you.” doesn’t apply here.

The deep web is about as mundane as the surface web, really — it's just wrapped in a thin layer of secrecy. Mostly, it's emails, social media profiles, subscription sites like Netflix, and anything you need to fill out a form to access. But because the deep web is hidden from search engines, some people use it for more nefarious purposes.

This is where things take a dark turn. The terms dark web and deep web are often used interchangeably but they aren’t synonymous. The dark web is made up of encrypted sites. The sole motive for this - total anonymity. Encrypted sites lack the DNS and IP addresses that usually make websites identifiable. More confusing still: To access them, users have to use encrypting software that masks their IP addresses, making the users hard to identify, too.

All this secrecy calls for some pretty nasty stuff.

The Dark web specialize in illegal goods and services. The now defunct site ‘Silk Road’ was the most infamous of them all. When its creator, Ross Ulbricht, was arrested in 2013, Silk Road had 12,000 listings for everything from weed to heroin. (Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison.) The dark web also provides shady resources for hitmen, terrorists, and other criminals; overall, its illicit marketplaces generate more than $500,000 per day. Just accessing the dark web can set off red flags at the FBI.

I made the mistake of surfing the dark web. The stuff I came across kept me up for several nights. It’s an accurate representation of the murkier sides of humans.

Tread with caution.