The dark web is part of the internet not indexed by standard search engines such as Yahoo, Google, and Bing. You cannot access it with regular browsers like Firefox or Chrome. Instead, you need a specific configuration, software, or authorization to access it.
Basically, the internet comprises three parts: surface web, deep web, and dark web.
The surface web is the smallest part of the internet. It is easily accessible by the general public and does not require any special configuration. You can access it with regular web browsers and search engines. This is where you find sites like Facebook, Wikipedia, e-commerce sites, YouTube, and more.
Whereas the deep web is a portion of the internet not searchable by regular search engines. Most content here is password-protected. Also, you must log in or have a specific IP address or URL to access the deep web content.
Some sites on the deep web do not use standard top-level domains (TLD) such as .gov, .com, .net, etc. As a result, you cannot find them with a regular search engine. Other sites explicitly block search engines from identifying them.
Lastly, the dark web is the subset of the deep web that is generally inaccessible. It relies on P2P connections and requires specialized tools and software. Tor and I2P are the two commonly used tools for accessing the dark web to provide anonymity.
An easy way to find content on the dark web is to receive a link from someone who already knows about it.
The dark web is known for communicating about or selling illegal items such as weapons, drugs, stolen data, malware, etc. However, you can find legitimate content and activities here too. For example, you can find information unavailable to the public and share data privately whilst protecting your online identity.
