Abstract

Timely and secured access to reliable information on the web is a key to the advancement of knowledge in all fields of endeavour. The World Wide Web has, since the emergence of the internet in the 1960s, served as the bedrock for real-time information access and retrieval. Interestingly, only about 4% of internet resources are available easily and accessed through conventional search engines. The remaining 96% are found in the inner layers of the web known as the deep web and dark web or collectively known as the invisible web. Efficient access to resources of the internet at the sub-surface levels requires the use of specialized anonymized tools such as The Onion Router (Tor) browser but this is not without its issues and other concerns. This paper examines issues and concerns inherent in the deep and dark web as well as the potential measures towards the safe and convenient usage of these invisible web domains.