We often hear the terms Deep Web, Dark Web, and Tor. Sometimes, we even use the terms Deep Web and Dark Web interchangeably. But are they the same, or are they different? And how does Tor work? Let’s try to understand this.
What is the deep web?
The deep web is a part of the World Wide Web that is not indexed by the standard search engines. So, one cannot browse those pages normally.
For example, one can log in to social networking sites by giving his username and password. Then, the user can change the profile settings in such a way that only selected people will be able to see information about him. So, his profile pages will not be indexed by standard search engines. Those web pages will be considered to be a part of the deep web.
There are a number of ways a web page can be part of the deep web. For example,
- Webpages that need authentication to browse through.
- Textual content encoded in multimedia files.
- Dynamic pages that are returned by the server in response to a specific query, for example, after submitting a form.
- Websites that limit access to their web pages.
- Webpages that are accessible only through links produced by JavaScript.
- Webpages that are intentionally hidden from the internet and are accessible only through special software like Tor, I2P, or other darknet software.
- Webpages that are not linked by other pages that are searchable by standard search engines, i.e., pages without backlinks.
- Archived versions of webpages that are now inaccessible by search engines. There are many web archival services that enable users to see archived versions of web pages across time.






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