Introduction
If you think that the internet is a big place, be ready to get surprised because it’s much bigger than you think. Non-technical people often think that the internet comprises of sites like Facebook, Google, Twitter etc. and there is nothing more to it. If you think so too, then you have seen only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ because this article is about to tell you what the Deep web is and how to access it.
What is Deep Web?
We make tons of Google searches everyday whenever we want to visit a website. You might know that this is possible because Google has an index of all the websites on the internet and it gives you their link. You might be right except one thing – not all the websites are accessible via Google. Yep, that might surprise you but a big number of sites exist which search engines do not keep an index of, or, in other words, they are inaccessible from Google. The internet that you’ve known so far might only be the tip of the iceberg because Deep web comprises a big portion of the internet.
The sites on the Deep web are not indexed by search engines which is why you can never get to them from a Google search. Now questions might arise in you about what these websites are, who makes or controls them, why they cannot be accessed via Google, how they can be excessed, how they look like, what content they have etc. This article has answers for all of these questions so read on.
Tor Network and the idea of anonymity
Whenever we access a website we are not anonymous because of our IP address. It is what defines you uniquely on the internet. Some people don’t like this idea. They want internet surfing to be anonymous. People from several walks of life consider anonymity as a big issue. There’s one such organisation which controls something called a ‘Tor network’. TOR stands for ‘The Onion Router’. A Tor network is something you can use to hide yourself on the internet, even though it’s’ not 100% fool-proof. You can access the Tor network with the help of a Tor browser. A Tor browser is configured in such a way that it lets you access the websites without ever disclosing your IP address. It is something that provides anonymity to its users.
Accessing the Deep Web
How a Tor browser works is that it passes the data between you and your destination computer through several other computers which are often referred to as ‘nodes’ on the network. And every time the data passes though a computer it gets encrypted. As the data is passed through many computers one after the other it becomes very difficult if not impossible to trace back to you. This is how you gain anonymity on the internet. You can do it by simply downloading a Tor Browser and use it for surfing. You should not use it for simple things though like using Facebook. There are several guidelines which need to be followed to boost your anonymity which are provided by the Tor browser itself. You can even have it in your android device.
A word of caution
Always do remember that there are many ‘bad’ sites on the deep web that you need to stay away from. These sites have illegal material in them. Also, it is recommended to not use the Tor browser too much as it makes several agencies suspicious of your activities. Tor site looks pretty much like normal sites except that they require the Tor browsers to be accessed. Their content is sometimes inappropriate though so you might want to be careful.