The Growing Force That Will Soon Reshape The Entire Internet

The “dark web” has a sinister, even foreboding, reputation for good reason. People go to the dark web to anonymously buy illegal narcotics, even to see child pornography. Terrorists use the dark web to hide and organize. There are libraries of pirated books and music on the dark web. If the internet is an online world of towns and cities, then the dark web is the red-light districts, the hideouts of criminals and all the other dark alleys and criminal enterprises that exist the underground economy.

Nevertheless, the dark web is growing. More than growing, before long it will change the Internet as we know it.

Now okay, with that opening you might be picturing a darkness descending, pushing out the light of the Internet. In your head might be scenes reminiscent of a modern Batman movie as some villain takes over Gotham by shutting out the lights.

The thing is there is a lot more to the dark web than villains of every type.

The dark web is simply the portion of the Internet that can only be accessed on darknets, overlay networks that require specific software, configurations or authorization to access. The dark web is only a small part of the deep web, as the “deep web” is the portion of the Internet not indexed by web search engines.

Basically, the dark web is comprised of small peer-to-peer networks and larger and growing dark web networks like Tor, Freenet and I2P. The Tor portion of the dark web requires someone to download free software to be used as a browser. The name “Tor” comes from an acronym for the original software project name “The Onion Router.” Tor simply directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network. Round and round your signal goes in thousands of relays in an unknown sequence. This conceals your IP address and location.

The dark web then is certainly used by criminals, but it is increasingly also being used by individuals in countries that ban access to certain parts of the Internet, or that even hunt down and arrest people who say certain things or communicate with political dissidents.