The Darknet vs the Deep Web

There is much discussion over the Darknet, however, this phenomenon is often misunderstood as shown in this BBC news video. Chris Foxx explains in the video that much of the internet cannot be accessed using regular search engines, instead needing a specialist browser, however, he refers to this section of the internet as the dark web. Greenberg (2014:online) states that this is a misunderstanding; this is the deep web,  not the Darknet. The Darknet is actually just a small part of the deep web and is accessible using TOR, which stands for The Onion Router (Senker, 2016).

TOR was first invented by the US government in order to communicate in secret and was released to the public in order to remain anonymous (Fagoyinbo, 2013). The draw of the Darknet is that IP address of users are rerouted, meaning that the user is almost undetectable and virtually untraceable. Multiple sites are dedicated to criminal activity including: buying, selling or viewing of child pornography, drugs, prostitutes and organs as well as a wealth of information such as credit card numbers. The issue with the Darknet especially is that the anonymity means finding those that operate cryptomarkets is incredibly difficult (Maddox et al., 2015). It is easier for multiple people to commit crimes across the world sharing the web behind their anonymity than it is for police to try and track them all. Part of the reason for this is that the Darknet is always changing. Websites may only be up temporarily for a quick cash grab and offenders may only access the Darknet every few months or years making them very hard to find and catch.

However, that is not to say it is impossible. Silk Road was a cryptomarket selling illegal drugs that began February 2011 and was renown by 2012 with around 147,000 active buyers (Maddox et al., 2015). Despite having the same level of anonymity as the rest of the Darknet it was closed October 2013 by the FBI, Maddox et al., explain, and its founder arrested. This shows that it is possible to police the Darknet, however, Silk Road was one of the biggest cryptomarkets of its time, hence why it was investigated by the FBI. Smaller sites are more likely to go under the radar.

This has given a brief overview of what the deep web is and how it operates as a part of the deep web, not as the deep web as Chris Foxx mistook it for. The rest of these blog posts will focus simply on one aspect of the darknet; hurtcore pornography.

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