The Deep Web.

malf

Member
deep-web.jpg


Ok, so I've just discovered that the web we are using routinely (the surface web) is a tiny fraction (way less than 1 percent) of what's out there. Does anyone on here use the deep web routinely (and is happy to own up to that ;) )?

http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress...the-deep-web-a-first-trip-into-the-abyss.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web
 
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The whole "we only see 1% of the web" is probably a load of crap. There just aren't enough people using the deep web to make it that big. I've been on it once, but as I did not need to buy prostitutes, weed, cocaine, heroin, morphine, assault rifles, watch torture, pedophilia or snuff porn or have anyone murdered at the moment I went back to Skeptiko. Perhaps some other time . . .
 
I've heard of it, and some of the stuff that goes on in the deeper levels. drug trafficking, human trafficking, etc. Really shady stuff.
The whole "we only see 1% of the web" is probably a load of crap. There just aren't enough people using the deep web to make it that big. I've been on it once, but as I did not need to buy prostitutes, weed, cocaine, heroin, morphine, assault rifles, watch torture, pedophilia or snuff porn or have anyone murdered at the moment I went back to Skeptiko. Perhaps some other time . . .
That...that's a great overview
 
How do you get to the deep web? I want to go there.

Much of nasty shit and shady businesses going on there. Like Silk Road-stuff (selling-buying drugs, guns, rent-a-hit, and other vile businesses) - and extreme hackers, crackers - and probably where some shady military and intelligence traffic going on, like with Dark Internet, MILNET etc.
Deep Web is like that dark and smelly ally, in the middle of the night, that you know you shouldn't go down.
 
I'm thinking in certain nation states with huge populations and oppressive regimes (;)) it could be a force for good?
I agree, though I don't think population size is relevant, unless you are trying to specify some particular state(s) without actually naming it/them. But still, there's no good reason to ignore its possible usefulness in some of the smaller states.
 
The whole "we only see 1% of the web" is probably a load of crap. There just aren't enough people using the deep web to make it that big. .

??? What and how did you data-mine to find out how many people use it? It's one thing to state "probably a load of crap." Another thing to think you have any idea about how many people use it.
 
I agree, though I don't think population size is relevant, unless you are trying to specify some particular state(s) without actually naming it/them. But still, there's no good reason to ignore its possible usefulness in some of the smaller states.
Yep. But it might partly explain the sheer size. (I had the same thoughts as Craig over that)
 
Tor's definitions:

Web: the portion of the Internet which is accessible via a web browser; the World Wide Web.

Deep web: information which is not registered with any search engine (definition as per the August 2001 paper The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value from the Journal of Electronic Publishing). This includes information which is housed in databases and which is only viewable through dynamic pages generated when the content is requested, and information which resides behind authentication such as on private organizational networks and public networks such as Facebook.

Dark web: that portion of the web which cannot be easily reached from the public Internet, and usually requires specialized software to access. Examples of the dark web are the Tor network and hidden services, the I2P network and its eepsites, and the RetroShare network.

Public Internet: the 'regular' Internet, available for all to use, and open to filtering/censorship by governments and ISPs.

Private network: a computer network which is reserved for specific purposes, e.g. company networks.

Overlay network: a computer network which is built on the top of another network. Nodes in the overlay can be thought of as being connected by virtual or logical links, each of which corresponds to a path, perhaps through many physical links, in the underlying network

Size
Size depends on exactly how we categorize things. For the purposes of this article we're talking about the web, i.e. the portions of the Internet which are accessible from a web browser; not the entire Internet itself. So from here, bearing in mind that we're discussing the dark web and the deep web:

The deep web is claimed to be approximately 500 times larger than the public Internet, based on figures in the Surfacing Hidden Value report above and on others (e.g. About.com), although these others often only reference the paper above.

The dark web, however, is considered to be much smaller. There are likely to be 1-2000 Tor hidden services [ freehaven.net, donncha.is ], although this is very hard to establish as hidden services are, by design, hidden! There are currently approximately 3,000,000 Tor users; this provides an upper bound on the number of hidden services, and it is likely that few of these user actually run hidden services.

Should we expand the discussion to include all of the dark networks then the discussion becomes a little less clear. P2P, VPN and VoIP networks are all overlay networks, and may be considered dark networks in the same manner as the dark web above (specialized software is required for access). Tor is not the only dark or overlay network. Sizes of other dark networks such as I2P and RetroShare are hard to gauge; however based on popularity it would appear reasonable to guess that, in total, the size of dark networks combined is far smaller that the deep web, and highly likely to be smaller than the public Internet.

Conclusion
The dark web is not really all that large. Important, but not "vast reaches of the Internet", and certainly not as large as the deep web. Overlay or dark networks may indeed be very large, as well as being more accepted as part of 'regular' Internet technology.
 
Wow, I just learned a lot about the Internet, thanks Saiko! So as I understand it, the web I can access through Google is like the 25% of the Earth which is land, which we fight over, and the rest of the web I can't access through Google is like the 75% of the Earth which is water, in which most of us have no idea what's going on? Spooky. Makes these spats between Skeptiko, etc. and JREF, etc. seem... petty.
 
Ok, I get the dangers of hiring hitmen or black market firearms distribution. What's the problem with consensual adults wanting to buy LSD, again?
Well, last time I checked it is illegal in most countries. So thats the why I guess.
 
I don't know if Silk-Road was evil. The direct-access possibly cut out a lot of the violence/suffering associated with the drug trade, and a lot of that bad stuff is thanks to the moronic War on Drugs.

As for the rest of the deep web, I thought about looking around out of curiosity but so many people said they came across rather disturbing things without even seeking it all out.

I'm also not convinced the 1: 99 ratio is correct.
 
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