The Web, the Deep Web, and the Dark Web

July 18, 2016

If it was not a challenge enough trying to understand how the Internet works and avoiding identity theft, try carving through the various layers of the Internet such as the Deep Web and the Dark Web.  It gets confusing, but “Big Data And The Deep, Dark Web” from Data Informed clears up some of the clouds that darken Internet browsing.

The differences between the three are not that difficult to understand once they are spelled out.  The Web is the part of the Internet that we use daily to check our email, read the news, check social media sites, etc.  The Deep Web is an Internet sector not readily picked up by search engines.  These include password protected sites, very specific information like booking a flight with particular airline on a certain date, and the TOR servers that allow users to browse anonymously.  The Dark Web are Web pages that are not indexed by search engines and sell illegal goods and services.

“We do not know everything about the Dark Web, much less the extent of its reach.

“What we do know is that the deep web has between 400 and 550 times more public information than the surface web. More than 200,000 deep web sites currently exist. Together, the 60 largest deep web sites contain around 750 terabytes of data, surpassing the size of the entire surface web by 40 times. Compared with the few billion individual documents on the surface web, 550 billion individual documents can be found on the deep web. A total of 95 percent of the deep web is publically accessible, meaning no fees or subscriptions.”

The biggest seller on the Dark Web is child pornography.  Most of the transactions take place using BitCoin with an estimated $56,000 in daily sales.  Criminals are not the only ones who use the Dark Web, whistle-blowers, journalists, and security organizations use it as well.  Big data has not even scratched the surface related to mining, but those interested can find information and do their own mining with a little digging

 

Whitney Grace,  July 18 , 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph

There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden Web/Dark
Web meet up on July 26, 2016.
Information is at this link: http://bit.ly/29tVKpx.

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