So what is the Deep Web? and more importantly, how do you access it?

If you want to visit a website like Amazon or Wikipedia, you won’t have any trouble finding it even if you don’t remember the exact URL. You can just type what you’re looking for into Google or Bing and a link will show up in the search results.

However, not every website can be found this way. The deep web is a term for any part of the internet that isn’t indexed by search engines and so can’t be found through search results.

Even though the deep web sounds intimidating, it includes lots of mundane, everyday websites like company intranets, webmail platforms, and private databases.

Even the contents of your personal Google Drive are part of the deep web because they are hidden behind an authentication process.

Within the deep web is another part of the internet called the dark web. These websites are so well-hidden that they can’t be accessed at all with a normal browser. Most of the dark web can only be accessed using Tor.

What is Tor?

Tor, short for The Onion Router, is a free, open-source software combined with a global network of servers that helps you stay anonymous online.

When you connect to the internet using Tor, your data is wrapped in multiple layers of secure encryption. Your encrypted data is then directed through a random series of volunteer-operated servers called nodes.

Each node that you pass through decrypts a single layer of encryption to learn where to direct your traffic next. The next node decrypts the next layer of encryption, and so on. The “onion” part of The Onion Router comes from this process of peeling off layers of encryption like the layers of an onion.

Click here to find out how to access .onion sites and the dark web