The Dark Web: A Dive Into the Darkest Side of the Internet

Abstract

The Internet has two main segments- “Surface Web” and “Deep Web”. Surface Web includes all the websites that are indexed and available to the general public whereas the webpages which are not indexed come under the category of deep web. However, the gravest part of the Deep web is the Dark web. The Dark web is the concealed content of the World Wide Web. It requires specialized software, authentication and some configuration to access. TOR (The Onion Router) is a multilayer encryption technique which provides secrecy and privacy to the user. Many researches and surveys investigated that a majority of internet users consider Deep Web and Dark Web as the same thing. In order to demystify the same and provide a structural analysis of the Internet, this paper sheds light on the current composition of the Internet and the portion of the World Wide Web held by surface web, deep web and the dark web. It also discusses how the dark web is different from the deep web, mechanism of accessing the deep web, tor browser and the benefits of the dark web along with some of the real-life applications.