Deep web

The Deep Web is the part of the World Wide Web you can not search on common search websites such as Google. The part you can search is called the Surface Web. The first person who used the term "Deep Web" was Mike Bergman, a computer scientist, in the year 2000.

Some people think that "darknet" and "Dark Web" are the same thing as Deep Web, but they are not. Let's explain what they mean:

• A darknet is a type of computer network (this means a connection between many computers, such as the Internet) that is private or closed. It is sometimes difficult to access a darknet. You would need to know a password, use specific computer programs, change the configuration of your web browser and many other things, depending on what network you are trying to access. Tor is an example of a darknet used by many people.^[1]

• The Dark Web is the part of the World Wide Web located in darknets. Since no darknet can be found by Google or any other search website, the entire Dark Web is also part of the Deep Web. Thus, the Dark Web exists inside the Deep Web but is not the same thing as it.^[2]

In common networks, the Internet Protocols (IPs) of all users are in most cases visible. The Internet Protocol is an important information that reveals, among other things, the location where the user is accessing the Internet from. In darknets, the IPs are hidden, invisible or very difficult to find. This makes many people access darknets because they do not want the others to know this information about them, such as where they are. In other words, they access darknets to have privacy.

There are many reasons people want privacy in the Internet. One of them is to do things forbidden by governments,^[3] such as piracy (which means sharing files protected by copyright laws).

References

1. Mansfield-Devine, Steve (2009). "Darknets". Computer Fraud & Security. 2009 (12): 4–6. doi:10.1016/S1361-3723(09)70150-2.
2. "Expedition to the lost net". BBC News. December 26, 2001.
3. Wood, Jessica (2010). "The Darknet: a digital copyright revolution" (PDF). Richmond Journal of Law and Technology. 16 (4). Retrieved 25 October 2011.