Nice try, NSA.

The whole Deep Web/Dark Web thing seems to have gained a lot buzz lately, and people on social media often conflate terms (or add sinister drama to something mundane).

For the non-technical people reading: the Deep Web is the name for sites on the internet that aren't indexed by a search engine like Google. There are several ways Google might not know about a website:

* The website is private and requires a password to get in (e.g. private companies, homeowners associations, sports clubs, etc)

* No web page that Google knows about links to the website

* Nobody has submitted the website to Google so it knows to look there

When Google maintains their index, it uses spiders, which are programs that open web pages, index all the text, and then follow every clickable link they find and repeat. That means the Google spiders need a known starting point. They don't just randomly try web addresses to see if there's a website there. As such, the Deep Web isn't really nefarious - it's basically a synonym for "not public". Your home computer network is part of the deep web. So are military computer networks.

Contrast that to the Dark Web/Darknet, which is more like a layer built on top of the regular internet. This is where Tor lives, and it's designed to be a peer-to-peer network which makes everyone anonymous (barring an exploit or bug). This is where the silk road existed and reports of many deviant sites. The dark web is where anything can go, because law enforcement can't operate.

According to wiki, the terms got mixed up because the dark web (Tor) didn't used to be indexable, so it was also technically the deep web.

To actually answer Dynamite-86's question, though... I have no use for it, and in general most people won't, either. To me, there are pros and cons to using the dark web, and you can make a pretty logical decision based on your usage.

Pros:

* You the user are anonymous - anything you do can't be tracked back to your home IP address

* Communications are secure - no one can monitor what you're saying on the network

Cons:

* Substantially slower than "the regular internet"

* Fussing with additional software and configuration to use it

* The groups you communicate with need to be there as well

While anybody should be able to enjoy privacy, the pros don't outweigh the cons for most peoples' usages. The dark web is effective in extreme cases:

* You are planning serious crimes

* You are coordinating dissidence inside a country with a hostile government

* You have very strong personal opinions about privacy

* You believe you are under surveillance

* You're buying/selling illegal products, like drugs or weapons

* Child porn/illegal entertainment

Your average internet user isn't doing any of those things. We still break plenty of laws on the public internet, but they're minor, widespread, and the chances of getting in serious trouble are so low it's not worth the bother. Downloading movies, bitching about politicians, flame wars - none of these are ever going to really interest the Powers That Be, because they are minor actions with minor consequences (and the security bureaus are busy enough as it is doing whatever it is they do). Hell, drug dealers have been coordinating using telephones for decades and business is still booming.

tl;dr The dark web is a cool idea. I love the idea that law enforcement can be completely impotent at interfering with or preventing people from gathering in an environment - even if it's digital and the only exchange is information. At the same time, there are no significant laws in my country that I feel compelled to break and therefore have to conduct 'business' in the dark web, so to me the dark web is useless.

I think you may have some terms and definitions a little bit mixed up.

"Deep Web" - this is just a page or website that can't be indexed by search engines in the traditional sense. The number of these sites gets smaller as search engines become more robust and capable of finding things. But back when searches were just a simple Ctrl-F like feature there were sites and pages that couldn't be indexed by an engine. For example - Plane Ticket Prices, Hotel booking, ect ect. Things that were fluctuating a lot and needed specific time and date type information. You couldn't search "cheapest plane ticket from NYC to SF" and have a result pop up saying $350 or something. Since this information was harder to get at then just "birthplace of King Edward II" it was deeper information or a deepweb. Now a days it can mean a website set not to be indexed by options and things but it is still just an unindexed website.

"Darkweb" "Darknet" - Websites that are not on the standard www protocol. They are most commonly on the onion network protocol (TOR) or http://onion.xxx vs http://www.xxx which helps mask location of the server as well as content coming in and out of the website. The onion protocol is only accessible from a TOR connection. Thus onion websites can only be accessed by TOR enabled browsers. TOR itself acts just like a VPN so it can be enabled on almost any browser, but there are browser packages that are made to simplify this process for the end user.

Now there are some things misleading in your statement that send up lots of red flags for your claimed knowledge, I'll make a list of things that scare me as your comments go on.

"I know how the tor browser functions (P2P architecture)" - Good perfect summation of what needs to be said about that. "I know that the deep web is a majority of the internet" - I am not 100% sure if this is a true statement or not at this point in time, as the deepweb is just pages that you can't google for. But the way you phrase it makes it sound like there is this huge "secret" internet thing, but that whole concept would be ridiculous. How could that be true if the majority of the population wouldn't be able to access it, and the majority of the population makes up the majority of the internet. Websites are there to make profits, if nobody can access your website why make it? This is where you start confusing deep and dark web and I start getting really scared of where you're going with this. " going on the deep web as an average Joe isn't dangerous unless you venture onto a dark website" - at this point I have discovered with 100% certainty that you're confusing ideas and concepts and are either just regurgitating something someone else said or are just trying to sound smart about something you're not 100% clear on. "there is a piece of maleware (like the FBI used previously) " - a lot of TOR browsers limit what scripts can and can't run on a website and automatic downloads and injections would for sure be disabled, and most users of TOR browsers that I know of have more add-ons and things that block all scripts and monitors incoming data. "that could potentially get a read on your location." - why would the FBI care you're using the darknet? unless you're doing something illegal, but most illegal things on the darknet are drugs and that falls under DEA not FBI.

There is my breakdown of your comments for your review.

As to answer your questions, I use TOR browsers occasionally to visit normal websites to help mask my identity and I have used them to connect to onion websites. I don't use them often but if there is an occasion or something that requires it I will use it.