We think we use the Internet a lot, visiting Facebook, watching videos on YouTube, streaming Netflix and reading articles online. We may spend a lot of time on the web but we’re not actually accessing very much of it. In August 2014, some sites including eBay went offline. Wider afield, users generally experienced slower browsing speeds and sporadic outages of sites. Some users noticed it and the media blew it up. All of a sudden there were reports of the Internet being full and that it is going to shut down.
That problem was caused by the infrastructure of the Internet; the traffic exceeded the capacity of old router memory caused by the very rapid growth of the Internet.
The Internet has grown rapidly and it is huge.
The sites we use on a daily basis are referred to as surface web, sites that search engines can access.These web pages are static and connected to other sites, which means they can be discovered. The deep web is estimated to be 4,000-5,000 times larger than surface web although it’s impossible to quantify. The sites on the deep web are not crawled by search engines and are dynamically generated, meaning that ordinary browsers will not be able to find them. The majority of what’s there can be mundane, dead links and data housing sites or databases with no interesting or useful data. However, it’s the dark side of the deep web that people are more aware of.
Searching the Internet can be described metaphorically as dragging a net across the surface of the ocean. You can catch a lot from the surface but very little from below. Much of the web is buried deep; this thriving community can only be accessed using a special browser.
The Tor browser allows you to access the deep web as it conceals your location and therefore your identity.
‘Where Google helps you find the needle, Tor lets you explore the haystack.’ – Business Insider
The Tor Project was launched in 2002 and has since been developing. Tor is an acronym for the ‘onion routing’ principle where a plaintext message is wrapped in lots of layers of encryption to render online users anonymous. It was originally developed to protect U.S. naval intelligence communications online. However, the anonymity that Tor provides has been taken advantage of and illegal activity thrives within an area of the deep web called the dark web.
Pretty much anything can be found and bought on the dark web. Silk Road was an illicit, anonymous, online marketplace in the dark web.
Known as the “Amazon for drugs”, Silk Road was probably the most famous Tor site in history.
In October 2013, the site hit headlines when its founder and administrator was arrested in a public library on suspicion of drug trafficking, soliciting murder, facilitating computer hacking and money laundering, to which he has pleaded not guilty. The FBI shut Silk Road down and seized over $3.5m worth of Bitcoins. But that was not the end of Silk Road. Silk Road 2.0 has been created and there are plenty of other alternative sites like it, still active in the dark web.
Trading anonymously is carried out using Bitcoins; the peer-to-peer crypto-currency that exists outside the control of governments. Supposedly untraceable, this internet currency can be spent anonymously on: drugs, firearms, counterfeit money, passports, identities, accounts, stolen electronics and other contraband as well as hiring services such as hackers and hit men. Taboo and illegal pornography also make up a large proportion of the dark web.
But it’s not just the illegal world that booms in the deep, dark web.
Tor is necessary for us to live in the way that we do, in such a technological age.
People and organisations that require anonymity to share information and communicate safely without fear, use Tor. It provides anonymity to vulnerable Internet users by offering freedom of expression to those for example, in countries where the Internet is heavily censored. News organisations can protect the anonymity of whistle-blowers and of course, the deep web is a resource that victims of domestic violence, rape and crime, can use for support.
Legally, accessing Tor is permitted. It only becomes illegal when you use it to break the law. It’s important to remember that when you download Tor and use it to explore, someone, somewhere is logging it. Although what you do on the deep web may be untraceable, looking at, reading, sharing and downloading banned content is unlawful and this can put you in a lot of trouble. You may not be able to prove what you do, but you also can’t disprove it either.
Although none of Nottingham University’s policies specifically mention the deep web, if a student does something illegal, it doesn’t matter whether it’s done on the visible web or the deep web, the consequences are still the same and Nottinghamshire Police support this notion.
“If the university becomes aware of it [illegal activity] through network monitoring or other means, it will be a disciplinary matter and if serious enough, could be reported to the police.” – UoN Information Services
In it’s widest context, the deep web’s content is just pages that are not indexed and therefore not visible to search engines. Most of it is just normal, legitimate content that for various reasons cannot be easily accessed. However, it’s usually the illegal activity that draws people in. Security and anonymity is important and something that should be cherished, not taken advantage of. It’s important to remember that one way or another, what people do on the web or in day-to-day life, is being monitored and you wouldn’t want to get in trouble for something you shouldn’t be doing.
Paula Clerkin
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Image courtesy of cvrcak1 via Flickr
