dark web
termdark websecurityhacking
The subset of the deep web reachable only through anonymity networks, where sites hide their location as well as their content.
Its defining technology is onion routing via Tor, whose hidden services (the .onion addresses) conceal server and visitor alike. The result is genuinely mixed: whistleblower drop boxes, censored-press mirrors, and privacy forums share the space with the marketplaces the headlines fixate on, from Silk Road onward, which trade in illicit goods and settle in cryptocurrency. Its honest framing is a tool, not a place, and anonymity is what it provides to everyone who arrives, for any reason.
The dark web is content reachable only through anonymity networks, most often Tor hidden services. It is a small fraction of the deep web, which is itself most of the internet, and the numbers routinely quoted in media coverage inflate it by orders of magnitude.
Its composition is more mundane than its reputation. Alongside the criminal markets that generate coverage sit mirrors of news organizations, secure document submission for journalists, forums for people in countries where the open web is monitored, and a large amount of nothing much. The technology is the same in every case, because anonymity that could distinguish between users would not be anonymity, and that is a property rather than an oversight.
Also known as: dark websites, dark markets, darknet markets, hidden services