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Answer by Kat Lightman, student of biology:
Exploring the deep Web is something you should not do without careful planning and consideration. First of all, anything you see you will never be able to un-see. That’s just a brief psychological warning.
Secondly, many websites in the deep Web are not legal to visit. Some people enjoy child pornography, snuff films, torture flicks, and other unpleasant kinds of socially unacceptable “entertainment.” The deep Web is where the dredges of society get that material. The deep Web is also the black market for everything you can imagine: child trafficking, prostitution, drug dealing, organized crime—essentially anything that is illegal on the mainstream Internet relies on the deep Web’s anonymity to continue operating.
These websites often change addresses frequently, and quite a bit of effort must be taken in order to find them. Because of the nature of these websites, their visitors are monitored. Although law enforcement may do their best to have these websites shut down, the deep Web is under no legal jurisdiction (hence, the reason for the deep Web’s existence). People who visit these websites without going to prison are employing certain precautions to avoid being tracked.
There are hardware and software methods to remain anonymous online, and people who browse the deep Web with intent build a barrier of protection around their Internet identities. However, someone who browses the deep Web out of pure curiosity can also get into serious legal trouble. (I hope your interest in the deep Web is simply curiosity.) Your intentions for visiting restricted websites are irrelevant to law enforcement.
Think of it this way: If you went to someone’s house out of curiosity to watch a murder, would your intentions for being there matter? Absolutely not. You would be hauled to court with any number of charges against you simply because you chose to be there voluntarily.
The deep Web is no different, and the easiest people to catch are the “tourists”—the curious citizens who skip into the deep Web without anything in place to keep their identities and locations anonymous.
The deep Web is not a tourist destination. If you are dead set on visiting the deep Web I would suggest you look into what software and hardware you will need to browse anonymously. I will not, however, give you tips on how to do so.
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