Understanding the hidden parts of the internet.
The deep web is just content you can't find on a search engine, like your personal email account, social media accounts, online banking account, a brand's gated pages, or a corporation's private database.
The dark web is a subset of the deep web that has been intentionally hidden and is inaccessible through standard web browsers.
"Deep web" and "dark web" are not interchangeable terms. Although the entire dark web is part of the deep web, the deep web is not a part of the dark web. Simply put, the deep web is any part of the internet that is not indexed by search engines. This includes websites that gate their content behind paywalls, password-protected websites, and even the contents of your email. The dark web, on the other hand, uses encryption software to provide even greater security.
The internet is often pictured as an iceberg: search engines only show the tip.
~5%
Public pages that search engines crawl and index.
~90%+
Online, but behind a login, paywall or database query. Ordinary and mostly harmless.
<1%
Deliberately hidden services reachable only with special software such as Tor.
Percentages are widely quoted rough estimates. The hidden web can't be measured precisely because, by definition, it isn't indexed.
Your traffic is wrapped in three layers of encryption. Each relay peels off one layer, like peeling an onion.
Thousands of volunteer-run relays worldwide, with millions of daily users. Live figures are published at metrics.torproject.org.
Modern (v3) onion addresses are 56 characters long and derived from the service's public key. With onion services, neither the visitor nor the server learns the other's IP address, and traffic never leaves the Tor network.
Onion routing was developed in the mid-1990s at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to protect government communications. Tor was released publicly in 2002, and the non-profit Tor Project was founded in 2006.
The largest and best-known darknet. It provides anonymous access to the normal internet and to .onion hidden services, and is used through Tor Browser.
The Invisible Internet Project uses "garlic routing", which bundles several messages together. It is designed mainly for services inside its own network (.i2p "eepsites") rather than browsing the regular web.
A peer-to-peer, censorship-resistant data store. Content is split, encrypted and spread across users' machines, so it stays available even if the original publisher goes offline.
Spot employee passwords from breaches before attackers use them.
Brokers sell VPN, RDP or admin access into companies, often an early warning of ransomware.
Detect your organisation's files posted on leak sites or traded on forums.
Learn which exploits, tools and targets criminals are discussing right now.
| Myth | Fact |
|---|---|
| The deep web and the dark web are the same thing. | The deep web is mostly everyday content behind logins. The dark web is a tiny, deliberately hidden part of it. |
| Using Tor is illegal. | Tor is legal in most countries and used daily by journalists, researchers and privacy-minded people. What you do with it can be illegal. |
| Tor makes you 100% anonymous. | Logging into personal accounts, opening downloaded files, browser exploits and mistakes in your operational security (OPSEC) can all reveal who you are. |
| Criminals on the dark web can't be caught. | Silk Road, AlphaBay, Hansa, Hydra and Genesis Market were all taken down, usually because of human mistakes and by following the money. |
| The dark web is mostly crime. | Illicit content is a big part of it, but a lot of onion traffic goes to ordinary sites, mirrors and privacy tools. |
Free services such as Have I Been Pwned tell you whether your email address appeared in a known data breach.
Use a password manager so one leak can't unlock everything, and turn on multi-factor authentication, preferably an app or hardware key rather than SMS.
Enable bank and credit alerts, freeze your credit if your identity data leaks, and change any password you find in a breach right away.