What Is The Dark Web?

You may have heard of The Dark Web before. Maybe you heard it from some movies you watched, or you saw or heard it somewhere. It can be from anything, but what exactly is it? What is The Dark Web? One common example used to describe it is the iceberg method. Think, if you will, of an iceberg in the middle of the ocean. What we see above the surface of the water represents the Surface Web. This is the Internet, what we use everyday when we log onto our computers. It's where browsers like Chrome and Yahoo! operate. It's also the part of the web you're using to read this post right now. Basically, it's what we use everday on our devices.

Now let's go underwater and see what's under the top of the iceberg. The middle part of the iceberg (not the top nor the bottom), under the surface is called the Deep Web. This is where government resources, legal documents, and other kinds of what-not are stored. It's stored in an area that can only be accessed by specific kinds of software. It's not really visible (or accessible) to normal Surface Web users like you and me. 

Let's go even deeper, to the very end of the iceberg that is all the way underwater. This is the Dark Web. Here, users' identities are completely anonymous. If you were to use The Dark Web, no one would know who you were and you wouldn't know anyone else on it. The Dark Web uses special encryption and complex systems so that you can't be tracked. Some people use it for privacy reasons as they don't want to be watched or tracked. In some cases, criminals use The Dark Web to make transactions that can't be taxed, drug trafficking, as well as other illegal and illicit transactions. While, many things that occur on The Dark Web are illegal, accessing The Dark Web itself isn't. You're allowed to access it, just be careful about what you buy, what you sell, the links you click on, etc. The Dark Web is a dangerous place, but can it be safely accessed? Yes.

How Can You (Safely) Access The Dark Web?

There are a few browsers and softwares you can use to safely access The Dark Web, the most popular one being the browser Tor (The Onion Router). Originally, it was developed by the U.S. Navy in the 1990s before being publicly released around 2004. Tor is a browser that allows you to browse The Dark Web with secure search engines such as DuckDuckGo (no, I'm not joking, that is a search engine name), while also allowing you to use onion sites. Onion sites are basically secure internet domains that guarantee anonymity on The Dark Web. Hence Tor's full name: The Onion Router. To use the Tor browser, you have to download it from the official website. There are different download options depending on what kind of device you're using (i.e, Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Android). 

So there you have it, folks! That's what The Dark Web is and how you can safely access it.  

Sources: Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dark-web.asp#:~:text=The%20dark%20web%20refers%20to,%2C%20email%20accounts%2C%20and%20databases. 

Norton: https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-how-to-how-can-i-access-the-deep-web.html