[tor-talk] Terminology: Deep v Dark Web

krishna e bera keb at cyblings.on.ca
Sat Jan 25 13:55:20 UTC 2014


On 14-01-25 06:53 AM, Katya Titov wrote:
> Roger Dingledine:
>> On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 06:44:11PM +1000, Katya Titov wrote:
>>> So are there any useful stats on the size of the dark web?
>>
>> Check out http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#oakland2013-trawling
>> for some statistics about the number of hidden services as of about
>> a year ago. It's not all that precise (and the fact that they could
>> collect these stats represents several bugs:
>> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/hidden-services-need-some-love )
>> but it's pretty darn clear that it's not "vast reaches of the
>> Internet" -- more like on the order of 1000 hidden services, many of
>> which aren't all that popular.
>>
>> (Not that popularity is a good judge of the value of a hidden service;
>> see example #1 on https://blog.torproject.org/blog/using-tor-good )
> 
> Thanks Roger, and Moritz too.
> 
> I've put together an article and placed it on the Tor Trac/Wiki:
> 
> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/HowBigIsTheDarkWeb

Cool - it's concise and useful as a reference point for media or public
relations.

To push the naming analogy a bit further, consider "dark matter" [0]
used in astrophysics. If the internet is the virtual universe, what
proportion would "dark energy" [1] - traffic which isnt indexed such as
email, bittorrents, streaming, IM/voip/videocall, gaming?  There was a
statistic a few years ago that more than 40% of traffic was bittorrent.

> It's a start, and I'll keep searching for more relevant information.
> 
> I have no idea how to make it appear on the front page, but then maybe
> it should wait to see whether or not it is up to standards first.
> 



[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy


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