What is the Deep Web?
(Thanks to our friends at Emsisoft for allowing us to share this article with you!)
The term “Deep Web” was first defined in 2001 by Bright Planet’s Michael K. Bergman but has origins as early as 1994, when Jill Ellsworth referred to an “invisible Web.” Today, the “Deep Web” refers to websites that are not indexed by major search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Deep web websites exist beneath the surface of the known and indexed web, and in its entirety the Deep Web is actually orders of magnitude larger than the surface web. The Deep Web is massive, ever-growing, and not completely accessible. Not surprisingly,it is also a breeding ground for malware and criminal activity.
In all, the Deep Web is comprised of a number of subsections, one of which is the Tor Network. Tor is used by people who want to access the Internet anonymously, and the network has actually been around since 2002. Common knowledge of Tor has yet to be established, but usage of the term is no doubt growing, and this is no doubt related to the media’s continual focus on Edward Snowden and the NSA. For this reason, the terms Tor and Deep Web often get confused and used interchangeably, but it is important to understand that this is not the case. The Tor Network is simply a piece of the Deep Web, and because it is freely accessible to anyone with a computer it is simply more well-known than other pieces.
