## What is the DarkWeb
The dark web sounds scary, but in reality, it is anything you cannot get to via Google, or that uses a masked IP address. The classification of the dark web is a subcategory of the deep web — any thing not indexed by web crawlers.
## TOR
This is probably the one you have heard of the most. Tor is an internet protocol that attempts to anonymize users by going through _layers_ of proxies. We discussed this process in a previous post. While Tor is home to nefarious users and content (hitmen, child pornography), Tor was, and still is, funded by the NSA to help journalists in other, more hostile, countries get stories out and distributed without being tracked. The Tor network can be used as a way to hide your IP to normal, clear web sites you visit, but you can also use it to access “hidden services.” Don’t be scared; that just means it is a site that is only accessibly via TOR and has a “.onion” address.
## I2P
This is a lesser know internet protocol. The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is an anonymous network layer that allows for anonymity between users.
## ZeroNet
This is a dark web service that uses a local client to access and download a complete history of a website you visit. It has its own e-mail client, messenger, and social media site built in. To access ZeroNet, you have to spin up a local server and navigate to it in a normal browser.
