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The terms “Deep Web”, “Dark Web” or “Darknet” are increasingly common in our jargon, especially in news related to cybersecurity. But, many times, they are used in the wrong way. To avoid confusion, we will look at the different terms and their meanings.
- Clearnet: also known as “Surface Net”. It is the “Clean Net” or the “Surface Net.” They are the pages that you find through Google and other search engines and that you access directly from them. That is, the Internet as we know it.
- Deep Web: it represents almost 90% of the information that is online, but that is not accessible through the standard search engines; it is not possible to access it publicly. The Deep Web is also composed of dynamic pages that are generated by consulting a database (bank inquiries, inquiries in travel portals for a specific site and day, etc.) or sites with a “disallow” in the robots.txt file . It is also known as “Invisible Web” (invisible web) or “Hidden Web” (hidden web).
- Dark Web: It is part of the Deep Web and, therefore, the terms are often confused. The Dark Web is the part of the Internet that can only be accessed through specific applications (it would represent 0.1% of online content). It is composed of pages that you cannot access if you do not have the necessary software that allows you to navigate through the Darknets in which they are hosted.
- Darknet: They are specific networks that host the pages of the Dark Web. The most popular is TOR, an anonymization network that has its own Darknet.
The names used for these networks or parts of the World Wide Web can have a negative connotation. It is true that many of the pages hosted on the Darknets have negative or criminal purposes. But, not all content on the Dark Web is illegal. It is a method of disseminating information anonymously and without censorship and, precisely because of this, it also serves as a hiding place for criminals.