A majority of the browsers and websites on the internet have nothing to do with the deep or dark web where users can get anonymous information about many different kinds of legal or illicit activities. These users can access news, events, and their online mail without having to hide their identity as they browse on these websites.
The deep web contains perfectly legal works of renowned scholars in their specialized field of research and these documents may not be accessible to the public at large without some kind of authorization from the owners of the manuscripts. The dark web is the portion of the internet that is only accessible by a specialized web browser because the internet activity and the darknet news on the dark web are completely private and cannot be traced back to any single user.
Understanding The Working Of The World Wide Web
There are millions of pages on the world wide web which are accessible to just about anyone who has a username and password on these websites. Some of the websites on the world wide web are search engines like Bing, Yahoo, Google, Firefox, and many others. Each one of these websites on the world wide web has a unique internet protocol address or IP address in the format nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn (nnn must be a number between 0 and 255). The local area network (LAN) in your community provides access to a wide area network (WAN) with the help of your local internet provider.
Each time you connect to a website, your computer cannot communicate directly with the host computer of the website you are trying to communicate with. So to connect to a certain website your computer must first send that packet of data to your home router with instructions in the packet about the intended communication. The router then sends that packet of data to your internet service provider and other hosting servers until it reaches its intended destination. Data can take any route from the host website back to your laptop at home.
Data travels from your PC to your local ISP then to the regional ISP then to the network service provider. The network service provider can direct the packet of data to the network access points (NAPs) or metropolitan area exchanges (MAEs) based on the user’s traffic request. There are many different naming conventions for websites and ways to identify users on the world wide web and all of these are a part of the clearnet. The clearnet is where all users, web pages, and databases are indexed and easily accessible to identified users.
What Is The Deep Web?
All of the websites on the internet which are not indexed by search engines or that are not visible to search engines directly are a part of the deep web. When you access one of the websites on the deep web you must use manual methods of accessing the website. Millions of websites can be categorized as a part of the deep web because they cannot be accessed directly by traditional search engines. These websites offer their users a higher level of privacy because it is not so easy to physically track a user on the deep web in comparison to a regular website on the clarinet.
The websites on the deep web can offer their users a higher level of privacy because the website host used to access the .onion address conceals the actual IP address of the server. The actual IP address of the users on that website could provide valuable information about the user’s physical location and other data. But since the IP address has been obfuscated by the website host, there is no way of getting access to that information. In this way, the users remain anonymous on that website or the specific domain as long as the hosting server wants their users to remain anonymous.
Examples of websites on the deep web are gated websites that require users to enter a username and password to access the information. These websites can include your Netflix account, banking websites, and your office’s login information on their LAN. There will be some websites that can opt to exclude their website and users from direct access to the world wide web. Accessing massive amounts of data on the deep web is not illegal but there is a part of the deep web that is called the darknet that is a gray area.
Deep Web vs Dark Web: How To Tell Them Apart?
The difference between the deep web and the dark web is that the dark web cannot be accessed without using special software designed to penetrate the recesses of the dark web. Users cannot inadvertently plunge into the dark web without taking the necessary steps to access the dark web. The darknet has restricted access because of the overlay of networks that require a configuration of specific ports and communications protocols to access these websites. Many different kinds of software can achieve these requirements but the user must take the initiative to install and use this software to access the dark web. What Are The Features Of A Web Portal?
The deep web can be accessed if someone gains access to one of the user’s login information on a particular network. This could be a disgruntled employee wanting payback for one last time or a competitor looking for information to get the upper hand. The dark web is a subcategory of the deep web where there is no distinction between anything legal or illegal based on any country’s laws because it is completely anonymous. You can sell and purchase items on the dark web but even the payment methods are completely anonymous.
Some examples of the software used to access the dark web are imminently harmless software like LimeWire, Frostwire, or Napster that can be classified as peer-to-peer software allowing users to share files across a WAN. The primary difference between the deep web and the dark web is that the dark web is not limited by any set of universal ‘searchability’ constraints. The darknet is not controlled or governed by any country or entity. This is why there are both legal and illegal activities being conducted on the darknet.