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.