Apart from the websites you see and use, there is a huge number of other websites that aren’t visible to search engines and cannot be accessed with a regular browser. The deep web is any website that’s not indexed by search engines. Google, Bing, Yahoo and the other search engines continuously send ‘bots’ (an automated software) that discover websites and classify them accordingly. However, many sites can’t be reached by none of these search engines. Some of the websites that can’t be reach include legit websites such as:

• Websites that require a login (news websites, paid websites like Hulu or other video streaming services)
• Data driven websites such as the catalog section of a library website
• Websites where the publisher enabled the ‘no bot’ option. For instance, you can create a website and choose not to make it accessible to search engines for privacy reasons. The only way your website can be found is if you gave the link to someone such as family, friends, co-workers, etc.

However, a small part of this deep web is referred to as the dark web. The dark web is made of private networks and websites, and yes, some of them sell weapons, drugs or even your ‘friendly’ professional assassin. Here are some stories published in the media about the dark net:

1) Business Insider: There’s A Secret Internet For Drug Dealers, Assassins, And Pedophiles

2) Gawker.com: The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug

3) Mashable.com: The Deep Net

You can also watch a short video that explains about the deep web:

To access the dark net, you need a special browser called the Tor browser. Most websites in the deep web end in “.onion” as opposed to .com or .net or .org or other commonly known suffix. In all your browsing, on the visible net or the deep one, we ask that you stay safe!