Our two digital textbooks have only one mention of the deep web--a brief mention of "dark social" in Chapter 10 of Social Media Marketing. While the deep web is not a priority topic for most marketers, instructors and students should be aware of its existence. Instructors should have a definition handy if anyone asks. My guess is that students are more likely to be aware of the concept than most instructors. They are also likely to be badly informed and susceptible to the many dangers that lurk there.
This post has the limited goal of making the instructor aware and providing correct definitions. If the reader in interested in more information on the subject, please read the
corresponding post on my new blog, Protecting Yourself in Cyberspace. The target audience of that blog is the layperson who uses the web, not professionals. It probably is not going to contain much information that is useful in the marketing classroom. However, you might like to follow it as an individual, maybe even as a researcher, and you might want to recommend that your students follow it for their own safety.
What is the Deep Web?
The web is generally stratified into three levels as shown in the graphic. The top two levels are:
The Surface Web. The surface web is the portion of the web that is indexed in search engines. It includes platforms large and small and is easily accessible to the user. Students should be aware of the dangers that are present even on the surface web when they have completed Chapter 17, the social and regulatory chapter. That chapter is, as it should be, devoted to the discussion of issues that affect the safety of business data on the web and resultant brand trust on the part of customers. The thoughtful student should realize that many of these same issues affect individual users, but I have always found that students can benefit from frequent reminders about the safety of their own personal data.
Sources indicate that there are currently about 4.49 billion indexed pages on the web. You often see the estimate that only 1% of the pages on the web are actually indexed.
The Deep Web. It's easy to guess, then, that the deep web is the portion of the web than cannot be indexed by search engines.It
is huge; perhaps 400 to 500 times the size of the surface web. Again, that's a figure you see often.
The deep web consists of content that has intentionally been hidden. That includes things like our social media profiles, employee websites, email--anything that requires a password for access. That means that most of the content on the deep web is innocuous. It's just things we want to keep private.
How is the Dark Web Different from the Deep Web?
The dark web is the portion of the deep web where the bad guys hang out. Sites on the dark web are encrypted and cannot be accessed by search engines. It requires a special browser to access the dark web. The Tor browser is the most famous. The browser itself is not dangerous. It was initially funded by the US government and is used by people like whistle blowers to mask their identities. The dark web is however, full of stolen passwords and illegal drugs. It is also said to be full of malware that will follow a visitor back to his normal haunts.
I have scoured the web to make sure these definitions are correct, and they are. What I have found in the process is that many people who, according to their credentials, should know better are careless. Beware!
Should Marketers Care About the Dark Web?
While they probably shouldn't loose sleep over it, marketers should be aware. They should keep an eye on it to see if there's anything that could affect their brand reputation. There is not much authoritative content specifically for marketers, but this
publication on the AMA website is good. Unfortunately it doesn't have a publication date, but it could be 2016. That's not terribly recent, but in this case of this type of content it's ok.
Should Users Care About the Deep Web and the Dark Web?
We use the deep web all the time, and it is not a problem. We should care about the dark web, although, since everything is encrypted, it is pretty difficult to stumble onto it. I just suggest that it's useful for students to be warned about the potential dangers, especially malware, of intentionally venturing onto the dark web.
There's an interesting and useful way to demonstrate what can go on there and still stay safe.
This site lets the user look to see if her passwords are for sale on the dark web. I've searched it occasionally over the past year or so and see passwords from three sites that were hacked some time ago. I'm not exactly sure how to interpret that, although I have been more careful lately. And yes, I have changed the stolen passwords.
The "word" pwned means to totally obliterate an opponent, as in a video game. Wonder how many of your students know that.
This makes for a good classroom exercise. I usually use my own email address for something like this, having first tested it at home. One warning is that it's a free site and you may find yourself closed out if you use it often. You could ask for a brave student to volunteer theirs--and hope it won't turn up something embarrassing!
Related Updates
Use of dark web to
compromise emails with 1-minute video
German
proposed dark web laws
MIT
dark web research (might be behind a paywall)
