Welcome to the web’s dark side

How much should you know about the dark side of the Internet? Beneath the surface -- the eBay auctions, Wikipedia entries, news pages -- there is a hidden part that cannot be found in a Google search. This is the deep web, and experts say it is larger than the Internet. Some estimates reckon the ratio could be about 95 percent deep web to 5 percent surface Internet.

For the most part, the deep web is unsearchable for mundane reasons. The data may be in formats that are not easy to access. They may not be linked to anything else, forgotten. A small percentage of the deep web, however, is intentionally hidden, accessible only to those who know what they are looking for and those who have been invited in. This is the dark net, a place that titillates the imagination, where drugs are bought and sold, terrorists plot, paedophiles share images and trolls plan campaigns of harassment.