Did you know your information is up for sale on the black market?

You’ve probably heard about the black market — a place where illegal narcotics, dangerous weapons, stolen information and even illicit pornography are sold. However, the black market is not an actual location — so where exactly does one purchase these kinds of contraband?

Surprisingly enough, the black market can be reached through the comfort of one’s home, for it lives on the internet — in a location of the world wide web that cannot be indexed by search engines. The online black market has been deemed the “deep web” — and its existence is affecting millions.

When I think “deep web,” I like to correlate the unindexed part of the internet to the ocean and its vastness. The surface of the ocean is where you’ll find sites you may use often, like Amazon, Wikipedia and Google. Now, the deep part of the ocean, a place where researchers have not been able to visit as a result of its depth and difficulty to reach, would be where the deep web resides.

Many world wide web users may be completely unaware of the deep web’s existence. After all, the majority of people only visit web-sites on the “surface” of the internet. However, it is important to realize the organized criminal network that lies underneath.

Hackers are using the deep web for their own personal gain while completely disregarding the fact that they are ruining the lives of millions of innocent global citizens through actions like identity fraud and information-hacking. The stolen content on the deep web makes this part of the internet a dangerously unstoppable force.

It doesn’t take a tech-savvy hacker to access the deep web, though — all one has to do is download an online router like Tor (short for the onion router) — which describes itself as a non-profit organization aimed at helping people browse sites anonymously while avoiding network surveillance.

According to the article, “What is Tor and should I use it?” posted on website LifeHacker, contributing writer Thorin Klosowski describes the different reasons as to why the Tor network is downloaded by users: “Tor’s technology isn’t just about browsing anonymously. It can also host web sites through its hidden services that are only accessible by other Tor users. It’s on one of these hidden service sites that something like The Silk Road exists to traffic drugs. Tor’s hosting capabilities tend to pop up in police reports for things like child pornography and arms trading, too.”

Wait, did Klosowski just mention The Silk Road? Let me tell you, he’s not talking about the ancient trade route that created cultural interaction through regions of the Asian continent. The writer is referring to a website that once existed on the deep web notorious for selling all things illegal — from illicit firearms to stolen social security cards.

The Silk Road operated from 2011 to 2013 and its goal was to create an online criminal marketplace outside the reach of government regulation. Although the site was shut down by authorities, the online black market generated more than 1 billion dollars while it was in operation.

Although the Silk Road is now shut down, there are thousands of sites on the deep web mirroring the efforts of the once successful Silk Road. Yahoo’s announcement of its data being breached is a scary reminder that the deep web is home to websites both selling and using this kind of breached information for malicious economic gain.

It’s a terrifying reality — one that makes me uneasy and wary of sharing any sort of important information, such as my credit card number, online. However, I’m convinced that the same way the FBI and CIA were able to join forces and shut down the thriving Silk Road, other deep web sites offering similar illegal goods could be blocked by authorities as well.

Let me make my optimism a bit more clear though — I believe the authorities will be able to crack down a certain number of these sites but will never be able to shut them all down. The reason as to why is because there are trillions of websites on the deep web.

According to an article titled, “The dark side of the internet,” by Andy Beckett for The Guardian, the average internet user can only access 0.03 percent of the internet through search engines like Google — the rest of the internet is the deep web. This means the deep web is filled with an endless amount of unindexed websites. Therefore, to try and shut them all down would be an ambitious but impossible task.

Patrick O’Neill, who writes for online magazine, The Kernel, effectively describes the deep web in his article, “The unstoppable rise of the Deep Web:” “It’s a hydra. Cutting off one head only means two more will grow in its place.”

The Deep Web has helped facilitate the flow of narcotics, deadly weapons and child pornography throughout the world. This dark and obscure side of the world wide web has affected millions of lives negatively. It is vital that information about this online black market reaches mainstream media.

The more global citizens know about it, the more careful they will be online. At least that’s what I hope. A worst case scenario is that the more people find out about it — the more illegal transactions will thrive.