The dark side of the internet.

“The dark side of the internet”, sounds interesting right? Yes it does sounds interesting. We all know what is internet? The internet is a vast network that connects computers all over the world. Through the internet, people can share information and can communicate from anywhere with an internet connection.

In this growing era of technology, we trust internet by making secure payments, storing medical records and sharing personal photos with family and friends. We trust a website when it claims our information is safe from intruders(hackers) and that when our information is posted privately, only we can access.

However, once the information is posted or sent it is public. Hackers can get into these seemingly private portals and extract information.

The vast internet consist of 3 layers.

Surface web

This is the portion of web which is accessible by the general public, when you run a web search using regular search engine’s such as, Google chrome, Firefox, Yahoo!. The surface web is also called as “visible web”.

The surface web is public, consisting of sites we use frequently such as, Facebook, Twitter, E-commerce sites(Amazon, flipkart). This layer makes up only 4 percent of entire internet.

Deep web.

The Deep web refers to any webpage that cannot directly indexed by a search engine. This could be because it requires login information to view the content. Emails, bank statements or a company’s internal database are all examples of the Deep Web.

Search engines can lead you to websites that have Deep Web content, but they are not able to index those specific pages. For example, a search engine can index some information form a instagram page, that consist name, profile photo, bio and other information depending on the user’s privacy settings, but further information’s such as, posts, highlights, story are hidden and therefore are deep web.

Though Deep web and darkweb together make up the other 96 percent of the internet that is unavailable to search engines , they are very distinct.

Dark web

The dark web refers to encrypted online content that is not indexed by conventional search engines. Sometimes, the dark web is also called the “dark net”. The dark web is a part of the deep web.The dark web refers to a part of the internet that isn’t indexed or visible by conventional web browsers and search engines (Yahoo, Google and Bing).

Similar to the surface web, the dark web consists of websites, marketplace. However, it requires an anonymous browser to access it. The web browser used to access the dark web is known as The Onion Router (TOR).

Why the dark web is refered as “the dark side of the internet”?

The dark web is commonly known to be the criminal activity hub. These crimes mostly involve the selling and buying of stolen data. This data ranges from credit card information, company financial information, account usernames and passwords, gun supplying, human trafficking, bank account information, business data and many more. According to the research, the number of stolen passwords in circulation on the dark web has increased by 300% since 2018.

The dark web empowers ordinary people, but some people will inevitably abuse that power. The dark web can make it easier to commit some of the worst crimes. For example, the combination of the dark web and cryptocurrencies technically makes it much easier to hire someone to commit a murder. While the dark web promises privacy to its users, it can also be used to violate the privacy of others. Private photos, medical records and financial information have all been stolen and shared on the dark web.

To conclude.

The darknet can be a dark place with sites and tools that are used to carry out criminal activities. It is difficult in today’s world to use the internet without being tracked and monitored in large public and private databases. Limiting the sharing of personal information, staying updated about recent cyber threats, and following steps to reduce risk in high-profile data breaches are all great steps to protect our information.By understanding the risks that the dark web poses, you can take the appropriate precautions to protect your data.