While many news outlets use 'deep web' and 'dark web' interchangeably, much of the deep portion as a whole is perfectly legal and safe. This deep web also includes the portion that we know as the dark web. Everything else, from academic journals to private databases and more illicit content, is out of reach. In fact, this hidden web is so large that it's impossible to discover exactly how many pages or websites are active at any one time.Ĭarrying on with the analogy, big search engines could be considered like fishing boats that can only 'catch' websites close to the surface. This would be the part of an iceberg beneath the water, much larger than the surface web. The deep web rests below the surface and accounts for approximately 90% of all websites. Locating surface web websites is possible because search engines can index the web via visible links (a process called “crawling” due to the search engine traveling the web like a spider). Websites are usually labeled with registry operators like “.com” and “.org” and can be easily located with popular search engines. From a statistical standpoint, this collective of websites and data makes up under 5% of the total internet.Īll commonly public-facing websites accessed via traditional browsers like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox are contained here.

If we continue to visualize the entire web like an iceberg, the open web would be the top portion that’s above the water. The open web, or surface web, is the “visible” surface layer. There are several terms surrounding the non-visible Web, but it's worth knowing how they differ if you're planning to browse off the beaten path. But the so-called 'visible' Internet (aka surface web or open web) - sites that can be found using search engines like Google and Yahoo - is just the tip of the iceberg. The Internet is sizable with millions of web pages, databases, and servers all run 24 hours a day. What is the dark web, deep web, and surface web? While some use it to evade government censorship, it has also been known to be utilized for highly illegal activity. It is used for keeping internet activity anonymous and private, which can be helpful in both legal and illegal applications.

The dark web is the hidden collective of internet sites only accessible by a specialized web browser.

Tor dark web browser