Agência Brasil explains: understand the deep web and the dark web
The terms refer to things obscure, secret, buried just below the fertile soil and rich in information and knowledge of the internet - and actually describe little-known aspects of the world wide web. In addition to the wide range of information available, the internet has deep layers of content, the deep web and the dark web , which do not always comply with the legislation of the countries where they were created and have the almost total anonymity of their creators.
The first ideas that emerge when citing deep web and dark web are illegal activities: drug trafficking, racism, hate groups, political movements outside the democratic debate and pedophilia. This preconception is not entirely wrong, but it is not entirely right either. There is much more to the deep layers of the internet than can be understood simply by the terms.
deep web
Literally translated as “deep internet”, the deep web is the layer just below the “shallow” internet – the one that appears in search engines and provides open content to anyone connected. According to National Public Radio (NPR), the United States' public radio agency, more than 90% of the internet is not available to “surface” browsers, and a large part of that huge slice is located in the deep web .
The exact amount of data “hidden” in the deep web could hardly be measured, as the inherent characteristic of this layer is that it is restricted. This information can be tracked by both law enforcement agencies and hackers .
To better understand, the deep web is the layer that stores all kinds of information that requires passwords, logins , tokens and uses encryption to be accessed. An account holder's banking information, personal and functional e-mails , website administration systems, blogs and social networks, for example, can be considered deep web content.
This layer of the internet, despite being restricted, is not totally different from the so-called “surface web ”. The fact that it is not indexable - a term that defines pages and content (photos, videos, files) that have the necessary characteristics to appear in search engines - does not make it "secret". Restricted only. This factor makes an extensive scan unfeasible to measure all the content that makes up the deep web .
dark web
When browsing the dark web , we really enter a dark world of information and content that is not available to ordinary users. Despite its dark name, this layer hides content that goes beyond illegalities, and also offers shelter for those who fight for human rights and for free and unrestricted information.
In countries where freedom of expression is limited and citizens can be arrested or executed for certain speeches, anonymous browsing through the deep layers of the internet serves as a secure means of communication for political dissidents and informants seeking to spread their stories to the rest of the world.
According to the non-profit organization Fund for Open Technology (ILO), which fights for unrestricted internet access across the planet, the Tor encrypted browser - an essential tool for those who do not want to be tracked and preferred by those who browses the dark web -, registers high traffic of political dissidents who use resources of this system to receive and disseminate news in countries with highly limited information flow, such as Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
“In general, media spaces have been tightly controlled in Africa, particularly in areas of political repression on the continent. Governments have realized the link established between the control of information and the stability of their mandates. As a result, internet censorship has intensified, as governments have seen the potential for facilitating revolutions [with access to information]”, says Babatunde Okunoye, an ILO researcher responsible for the survey.
According to data collected by Project Tor, which manages the eponymous browser, countries like China, Iran and Syria register growing numbers of dark web users - among them, ordinary people who seek, for example, posts on social networks and reports about their own nations , which sell international images that are different from the internal reality. Tor developers attribute many of the advances achieved during the so-called Arab Spring to the possibility of anonymity offered by the dark web , which according to its creators can be considered a strategic ground for learning and absorbing the notions of freedom and democracy.
Dark side
If you've ever read an article, an article or watched an article on the internet that mentioned the term dark web , you know that the largest online repository for drug sales in the world, the Silk Road (Silk Road, in free translation - reference to trade route linking Europe and Asia before the discovery of the sea route to the Indies) used to open doors to drug users and traffickers from across the globe through the dark web .
“It works like a maze and makes tracking very difficult. It is precisely this privacy that many people exploit to do harm”, explains Cleyton Viana, Technology coordinator at Serasa Consumidor.
Cleyton claims that data from common users can circulate on the dark web , and that packages with thousands of registrations, passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers and other documents can circulate freely in the dark layer without the owner's knowledge, which makes the tool especially attractive to criminals looking for victims.
Other sites that tried to fill the vacuum left by the demise of Silk Road in the sale of drugs, illegal firearms and even ads for hit men were also shut down .
The dark web has been the target of allegations about religious and political extremism, such as in the case of terrorist attacks on France . In Brazil, threats and manifestations of incitement to violence circulate in the restricted network, which is constantly searched by intelligence agencies .
Another focus of crimes is pedophilia, which benefits from the privacy offered by the obscure internet. Despite all the difficulties, the Federal Police has already launched successful operations to intercept pornographic material involving children circulating on the dark web . Among the various crimes investigated, international pedophile networks use this system to share images of torture and abuse of underprivileged children.
Edward Snowden , a former agent of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), used the dark web to leak hundreds of thousands of documents about the US government that revealed illegal monitoring and irregular recording of calls telephone numbers.
Text translated using artificial intelligence.
