Podchaser Logo
Home
SYSK Selects: How the Deep Web Works

SYSK Selects: How the Deep Web Works

Released Saturday, 4th April 2020
Good episode? Give it some love!
SYSK Selects: How the Deep Web Works

SYSK Selects: How the Deep Web Works

SYSK Selects: How the Deep Web Works

SYSK Selects: How the Deep Web Works

Saturday, 4th April 2020
Good episode? Give it some love!
Rate Episode

Episode Transcript

Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.

Use Ctrl + F to search

0:01

Hello, everyone, Happy Saturday. Chuck

0:03

here with another Saturday Selects pick this

0:06

week, How the Deep Web Works January.

0:10

This is a good one. Everyone's deep Web is deep

0:13

and dark and scary, or at least it can be. And

0:15

we dove into that it's changed a lot over

0:17

the past six years. But this

0:19

is a pretty good early peak at the deep web. And I was

0:21

proud of this one. So give listen. I hope

0:24

you enjoy it. Have a great weekend. Welcome

0:30

to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My Heart

0:32

Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,

0:39

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and

0:41

there's Charles Depy, Chuck Bryant, yea

0:44

Audie uh and it

0:46

makes the Stuff you should Know. That's right, mineus

0:48

Jerry. But with no that's right, we

0:51

lose a Jerry gain a Knoll. Yeah.

0:54

One step forward and another step forward?

0:58

Oh for you

1:00

are you've just been wailing on it. I'm not gonna

1:02

say two steps back with Nol, sitt and five ft

1:04

away, but it could be one and one. One

1:07

step foward with Nol, one step back for not having

1:09

Jerry. You're saying it's a step

1:11

forward not having Jerry, and a step forward

1:14

having nol. I'm just trying to

1:16

make everyone like me doing

1:20

a poor job of it. You

1:23

do a great job of Everybody loves the chuck,

1:26

not everybody who doesn't. I have some

1:28

mortal enemies. Mortal enemies.

1:30

Yeah, they want to kill them trying to kill you. H

1:34

we'll chuck. Yes, I will tell you what if

1:38

they did want to kill you, they wanted

1:40

to hire a hit many. Yeah. The

1:42

deep web is a good place to start, looking quite

1:45

a segway. It's been a while. I t that one up.

1:48

You did unintentionally. Yeah,

1:50

I spotted it and went after it. Yeah. This is

1:52

about both the deep and dark web,

1:54

which are two different things. The dark

1:57

web is part of the deep web, thank you. But the

1:59

deep web is necessarily dark, all

2:01

dark. Yeah, that's

2:04

very well put. The dark web is the nefarious

2:06

things that go on in the deep web, not

2:08

necessarily nefarious, but the purposefully

2:11

hidden. Yeah, that's true, because there are some

2:13

good things in the dark web. I totally misspoke. Yeah,

2:16

well you know what. I think that it's great that you confess

2:18

to it. You feel better, I do.

2:21

Man. This is a really upfront kind

2:23

of episode, isn't it. It's a very honest

2:25

we're bearing it all. Uh

2:30

so, do you have a fancy intro story?

2:32

No? You think I would? Right, My intro

2:34

gets buried later on. It's

2:37

a great intro, but it just I'll

2:40

use it as the intro. Okay,

2:42

go ahead, okay, okay,

2:46

Chuck. Yes, have you heard of our

2:48

favorite band, Iron Maiden? Ah?

2:50

Yeah, sure so. Iron Maiden is

2:53

arguably the most awesome band

2:55

of all time. Oh

2:58

dude, all right, not a huge

3:00

fan, but you you wouldn't be like I hate

3:02

Iron Maiden. They suck, of course. Not no,

3:05

because it makes you crazy. It's right. Iron

3:07

Maid's been around for a while. They're pretty

3:09

smart. They know what they're doing. Um

3:11

and recently they figured

3:14

out a way to maximize

3:17

their touring dollars by

3:19

flying their own plane. They well, Bruce

3:21

Dickinson always did. Yeah he

3:23

was. He's a certified pilot. It's gotta be efficient.

3:26

I would imagine, plus fun unless

3:28

Bruce was partying too hard and then they got

3:30

to fly to the next city that night. He wouldn't

3:33

do that, I hope not, because that's

3:35

that's dangerous. I mean, driving

3:37

drunk is bad enough, but flying drunk I

3:39

can only imagine. Sure. Uh,

3:41

and it's probably not just drunk, you know

3:43

what I'm saying. No, no, no, he's he's straight

3:46

straight has he always been? I

3:48

don't know. I can't verify that well anyway,

3:51

Um, Bruce and the boys uh

3:53

figured out that a good

3:55

way to figure out where to tour,

3:57

where to decide to tour, um be

4:00

to figure out where their

4:02

music was getting pirated the most.

4:05

That sounds reasonable. It does sound

4:07

reasonable. It's it. It provides

4:10

you with evidence of an established

4:12

fan base and a

4:14

fan base that is unwilling to pay

4:17

for your record but

4:20

would probably pay to see you live. How

4:22

does that reason? Well,

4:25

they like your music, but they don't

4:27

want to pay for your CD, so

4:29

why would they go to see live and pay? Because it's

4:31

different, Like, seeing a live show is way

4:33

different than buying a CD. You can't you can't

4:35

get a live show. You could get a video of a live

4:37

show, it's still not the same experience. A live show is

4:39

a live show. Plus, everybody always

4:41

knows that anybody involved

4:44

in the or entrenched in the

4:46

old guard music industry does

4:48

any band doesn't make any money on

4:50

their records and make it on touring, So

4:53

going to see a band live also is

4:55

kind of a true act of fandom because

4:57

you're really you're you're contributing

5:00

directly to your band that you like. You know.

5:02

Um, So what they did was they hired a company to

5:05

look at bit torrent sites and

5:07

find the regions where their

5:10

music it was most pirate ID and they

5:12

created a tour map from it and went and played

5:14

those regions. Did you do you have the number

5:16

one Iron Maiden pirated region?

5:21

But we're gonna say Rio, all

5:23

right, they're huge in South America. That's

5:25

that's my guess. We'll look it up afterward,

5:28

I guess Rio. And so they were like, we're

5:30

gonna start our tor and Rio. Yeah. And it wasn't

5:32

just that that one place, but it was

5:34

basically a tour that was built

5:37

on the areas where the music was most pirated.

5:39

It was a Stroker genius, but they

5:41

couldn't have done it without harvesting

5:44

the deep web because bit

5:46

torrent sites. When you search bit torrent,

5:49

it doesn't the average search engine

5:52

doesn't respond with a list

5:54

of bit torrent activity. It'll

5:56

just send you to a bit torrent site, which

5:59

means that those pages is of bit touring activity,

6:01

which are web pages, and they do exist.

6:04

They're part of what's called the deep web. That's

6:06

right, the surface web as we know

6:09

it, and search engines that we all use

6:11

like Google and being supposedly

6:14

only have access to about point zero

6:16

three percent of what is truly on

6:19

the world wide Web. It's like

6:23

scary and weird and thrilling all at

6:25

the same time. Point three

6:28

And anything else that's

6:30

buried is the deep web. And it's

6:32

not necessarily the

6:36

deep web is not is not when you're purposely

6:38

trying to hide things. It just may not be cataloged

6:40

and index may

6:43

a password. Sure, maybe one

6:45

of those timed sites that uh

6:47

don't let you access date

6:50

after a certain amount of time, could be anything

6:52

with a captution involved, anything

6:54

that's not hyperlinked. Uh, there's

6:56

lots of reasons that something could find it is all buried

6:59

in the deep web. And and you

7:01

make a good point to separate

7:03

the deep web and the dark webs. Let me give you an example

7:05

of deep web aside from those bit

7:07

torrent sites. Um, there's this company

7:10

called bright Planet and they had this price they provide

7:12

deep web harvesting, and they had this primer on

7:15

you know, what is the deep web. One of the examples

7:17

they used was if you look up government

7:19

grants on a traditional search engine,

7:22

it will probably provide you with

7:24

www. Dot grants dot gov as

7:27

one of the first returns right straight up. Um,

7:30

when you go onto grants dot CoV, you can then

7:32

search and find pages of

7:35

all these different government grants. You can search by

7:37

keyword, you can browse, but those pages

7:39

aren't going to come up on your normal Google

7:41

search. You have to go to the site,

7:44

which means that those pages of the actual grants

7:46

are part of the deep web. Yeah,

7:48

your bank account, you're checking account

7:51

online, if you have mobile banking

7:53

or online banking, it has a web page

7:55

all to its own right now. And if

7:59

I searched Chuck Bryant's

8:01

checking account, it would not come back.

8:04

I would not get that because it's behind a password.

8:07

It's a it's a website page. It's

8:09

a web page, but it's password

8:12

encrypted. Therefore it's part of the deep

8:14

web. Twitter until it index

8:16

tweets used to be you

8:18

couldn't search tweets individual

8:20

tweets. Now you can, so that

8:23

made them formerly a part of the deep web.

8:25

Actual tweets or every

8:28

company on the planet has some sort

8:30

of internal employee pages

8:33

like internal dot discovery

8:35

that only we can access and

8:38

you can't Google search any of that stuff, right,

8:40

or somebody could conceivably access

8:42

it. Maybe it depends

8:44

on the page, but you have to know the exact

8:47

u r L. So the idea is,

8:49

if it's blind, if

8:51

if search engines are blind to it, it's

8:53

part of the deep web. If search engines

8:55

can index it and bring it

8:57

back as a return results search

9:00

results, Um, it's part of

9:02

the surface web. Yeah, because that's all the search

9:04

engine is doing. They are We

9:07

might should do a full podcast on search engines at

9:09

some point, but the general thing is

9:11

that there is an index of data, and

9:14

they use spiders or crawlers

9:16

because it is a web, to crawl

9:19

around and locate domain names and hyperlinks

9:22

and basically index all

9:24

that in what they think will be most

9:26

helpful to what you're looking for. Right,

9:29

So chuck Brian's bank account. Yeah, there

9:31

are some web pages out there that contain

9:33

information related to that keyword

9:36

search. Yes, so a search

9:38

engine will keep an index with

9:40

that keyword search with the u

9:42

r L s, the locations, the page

9:45

content, some of the page content, the meta

9:47

tags are the metadata,

9:49

and other very brief

9:52

sketch information about those pages

9:55

associated with the keyword for an index,

9:57

which means that when you type in Chuck

9:59

Brian, it's bank account. You got a quit saying

10:01

that. Sorry, I thought about it as

10:03

I was saying it that last time. But when you type

10:06

in um Birds of Paradise

10:09

bank account, bank account, um,

10:12

it will the search engine goes and

10:14

accesses the index. It

10:16

doesn't have to go all the way across every page

10:18

on the web that it can find. It just goes

10:21

to its indices, and that's

10:23

how search results are returned so quickly.

10:25

It's not going across the internet. It's already

10:27

got the spider crawlers, the

10:29

bots doing that constantly.

10:32

The search engine is just going to the index

10:34

is that the bots have created from their searches.

10:37

Yeah, and it is super shallow. I mean, we said

10:39

point zero three percent. We do. We do

10:41

our whole job as researching online

10:44

mainly, and we run into this all

10:46

the time where you feel

10:48

like you're getting a very slim portion of

10:50

what you're trying to find out because

10:52

so many of the best uh, medical

10:55

journals and things like this don't

10:58

just pop up as you know, it's

11:00

more likely to be some headline

11:02

from CNN dot com and not like

11:04

a Harvard Medical Journal paper that could

11:06

really help you out. Yeah, And I mean, like you can

11:08

get deeper and deeper with

11:11

your keyword skills and your search

11:13

skills, but for

11:16

the most part that Yeah, the first returns of

11:18

first results, depending on what you search for,

11:20

are going to be, like you said, superficial.

11:23

Yeah. But even if you're super a super

11:25

sleuth, a Google master

11:27

like we all think we are, I mean, how can

11:29

how much can that be bumping it up point one?

11:32

Yeah, Well, a lot of the problem, to the chuck

11:34

is the so much of science

11:36

is behind a paywall. Yeah, yeah, really

11:39

really really expensive paywalls. To um,

11:42

which is like, here's the first eight lines of this awesome

11:44

medical research paper exactly if you want it,

11:47

give us. Yeah,

11:49

which is a problem in and of itself, not necessarily

11:51

related to this, but with current

11:54

search engine technology, you have, like

11:56

you said, a superficial result

11:59

from a core um

12:01

on the other end of the spectrum, And this is kind

12:03

of what search instances are dealing with now, Um,

12:06

the deeper you go into the deep web. Again,

12:09

the surface web is point zero three

12:11

percent of all of the web pages on the entire

12:13

Internet, So the further you go into

12:15

it, the more data you have, and

12:18

you eventually can run into the problem of what's

12:20

called big data, which not

12:22

capitalized B or D, which refers

12:24

to like companies like Google and and that

12:27

that can dig

12:29

and harvest and maintain a

12:31

large amount of data. It's just it's basically

12:33

data that's so much and so unwieldy

12:37

you can't even uh process

12:39

and search it. It's like not even helpful. It's

12:41

yeah, it's like a really bad Internet search.

12:44

Yeah. Um, so the the

12:46

the current state of

12:48

search engine design

12:51

or creation is balancing

12:53

that figuring out how to get less

12:56

superficial without running

12:58

into the big data problem of of

13:00

incoherent data due

13:02

to just massive amounts of returns.

13:05

And you might think that these search

13:07

engines do a great job because I can always find

13:09

out what I need, But you don't know what you're missing,

13:12

you know, right, So it's

13:14

it's sort of not even

13:16

correct to say that I always find out what I need

13:18

because you may even know you need it because

13:20

it's hidden. That's true, And I mean you're you're

13:22

missing quite a bit. Okay.

13:46

There's apparently fifty million

13:49

registered domains on

13:51

the Internet. Yeah, and that's I looked

13:53

at like just in two thousand twelve. I think

13:55

there're only like two hundred and fifty or something.

13:57

I mean, it seems like it's doubled in the last couple

14:00

years. Right, So there's five million domains,

14:02

for example, a lot of more garbage, yes, but

14:05

how stuff Works dot Com is one domain,

14:08

And I asked Tracy Wilson, who's the site

14:10

director and runs stuff you missed

14:12

in history class. It's one of the co hosts.

14:15

How many pages there are how stuff Works?

14:18

She said roughly at least,

14:21

so one domain out of five fifty million

14:23

has fifty pages itself.

14:26

Right, so you kind of get an idea of the scope.

14:29

Deep web is anywhere from

14:31

four hundred to five hundred times

14:33

bigger than the surface web. And

14:36

like you said, you don't know what you're missing

14:38

because you don't know what's out there because your search

14:40

returns aren't bringing you back

14:42

anything. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of important stuff

14:45

out there. We talked about medical papers. Um, apparently

14:47

there's engineering databases, financial

14:50

financial information, a lot of things

14:52

that could really help research.

14:55

Uh, but you just can't find it, right. Um.

14:58

Unpublished blog posts or just

15:00

basically anything that a person creates on

15:03

the Internet. Yeah, Um,

15:06

is if a page is created, it's

15:09

part of the deep web. Yeah,

15:11

unless you take this stuff down, it's living there forever, just

15:13

gathering dust exactly. So. Um,

15:16

and it's not just necessarily engineering

15:18

databases or medical information.

15:21

Um. There's also a lot of shady

15:23

stuff too. The dark web. That's

15:26

the that's the dark web. Yeah, that is the dark

15:28

web. Is when is um the sites

15:31

intentionally uh

15:33

reroute you. Well, we'll get to how

15:35

they do it, but basically it's a it's

15:37

an intentional anonymity.

15:40

Um, it's not. Oh, it just happens to be buried

15:42

on the deep web because it's not index it's it is purposely

15:44

hidden from the surface

15:46

web, so people can't track

15:49

the person searching for something

15:52

or the the end uh

15:55

website. I guess like

15:57

those are all just private essentially,

15:59

right, and privacy advocates are way

16:01

into it. You're not necessarily a

16:03

child pornographer, although there

16:05

is a lot of that kind of stuff on the dark web.

16:08

Um, there's also a lot of good that happens on the

16:10

dark web. Yeah. The the anonymity

16:13

and privacy and the desire for it isn't

16:15

in and of itself proof of wrongdoing, of course,

16:17

not no, which is frequently it's frequently

16:20

pointed out as that but incorrectly. Yeah,

16:22

I like, I don't want the n s A. And my business people like,

16:24

well, what are you doing right? Exactly nothing.

16:26

Yeah, I just don't want them in my business precisely.

16:29

Yeah. Um, that's an answer. That's

16:31

good enough. That answer is good enough. And

16:34

for a lot of people, um, they say,

16:36

well, then I need to go to the dark web to maintain

16:38

anonymity, um or higher

16:41

hit man right to kill Chuck

16:43

Bryant. That you could do. That's crazy,

16:46

Um, you could do. There

16:48

was a site for a while. Um, I don't know if

16:50

you've heard of it or not. It's called the Silk Road, Yeah,

16:53

which got shut down, and I teach

16:55

Chuck, I know you've heard of it. It's like the most famous

16:58

dark website of all time. The

17:00

the Feds busted um ross

17:02

Albrick, who may or may not be dread

17:04

Pirate Roberts, which was the online

17:07

name that they said he's the guy running this,

17:09

and he is now saying, actually that's not

17:12

me. Um, but all those bitcoins

17:14

are mine, so you can't

17:16

seize those bitcoins. And there

17:18

it's in courts now they're trying to determine whether

17:21

or not it's it counts as something

17:23

that you can seize as an asset

17:26

from a criminal. And they're saying that this is literally

17:28

a case that no court has ever heard before.

17:31

Yeah, they they it's never been

17:34

questioned whether you could seize cryptocurrency.

17:37

Yeah, and you should listen to our podcast on bitcoins

17:39

by the way, from not too many months ago.

17:42

But it's essentially just yeah, encrypted digital

17:45

currency. And they have a really really fascinating,

17:48

circumstantial case against a

17:50

brick Um, not just for operating

17:53

the Silk Road site.

17:55

Yeah. Um, that's where you could buy drugs

17:57

and things, by the way, right, which being the operator

17:59

of that in and of itself shouldn't be a crime. I'm

18:01

sure that they would have prosecuted him for that

18:04

if they'd been able to get their hands on him for

18:06

just that. But apparently they

18:08

also have him for at least two

18:11

hired contract killings. One

18:14

he he um,

18:16

I guess hired an undercover

18:19

cop to do it, and the guy

18:21

went to the person who he was taking

18:24

the hit out on and said, this guy's

18:26

trying to kill you. I need you to cooperate, and

18:29

I'm going to take pictures of you dead and

18:31

send them to this guy, and Old Brick apparently

18:34

gave him like forty grand up front, another forty

18:37

after he saw the photos. So like in

18:39

bitcoins, No, I think in

18:41

cash, although no, it would have been in bitcoins.

18:44

You're right, yeah, yeah, so who knows?

18:46

It could have been two bitcoins at the time or five

18:48

thousand. Well, silk Row two point oh

18:51

launched in November? Is it out? Now? It's

18:53

out? And um there are other copycatters,

18:56

like the black Market reloaded and

18:59

which that one down for a little while after silk Road

19:01

went down, but then it went back up. I think, yeah,

19:03

Like, I don't know, man, I hate to say you shouldn't

19:05

try and fight crime, but you're

19:08

not going to stop the stuff when one, you

19:10

know, you cut off the head of one and another grows right

19:12

out of it in its place. You know, it's

19:15

true if the structure

19:18

that's allowing for the anonymity can remain

19:21

intact, which is the dark web,

19:24

right, But it's not just the dark

19:26

web, it's like how you traverse the dark

19:28

web, like using tour Yeah, I guess we

19:30

haven't explained. Um, the Onion Router

19:32

t o R is what it's called and it is

19:35

software that you use to access the

19:37

deep web and the dark web if

19:39

you choose to UM and it

19:42

searches for these anonymous

19:44

sites for you, like a search engine, but instead

19:46

of dot com or dot org or

19:48

dot net, they end in dot onion the

19:51

idea and onion has many layers and

19:54

UM that's

19:56

that's how you access it through tour. You have to buy it and install

19:58

it on your computer. It makes it for free.

20:02

Yeah, Firefox had UM something

20:04

that it was basically a tour bundle.

20:06

It was the most popular one and you could download

20:08

it for free. But it's not

20:10

a web browser itself. It's like an add on to

20:12

a web browser that allows anonymity.

20:15

And it does two things. One, it

20:17

bounces your trail all over the world

20:20

from server to server, so it makes you and

20:22

your activity extraordinarily difficult

20:24

to track. It's not just like this computer went

20:26

to this site, right, It's like that's

20:29

that whole Onion thing. There's so many layers. It's

20:31

like we can't we don't know who this is or where they're,

20:33

where they are, what they're doing, or anything like that.

20:35

We just know right now that this particular

20:38

person happens to be it. There's a user on

20:40

silk Road, but we don't know who it is or

20:42

anything. You can't track them because they're using

20:44

Tour. The other thing is you can't get

20:46

into dot onion domain sites,

20:49

dark websites unless you're using

20:51

tour, Like they won't let you in unless you're

20:53

an anonymous user. Um So,

20:55

tour has this kind of twofold thing,

20:58

but there was recently a breach in it and it turned

21:00

out the FBI was using malware

21:03

to break through the anonymity of tour users.

21:06

And yeah, and found out a lot of people on

21:08

some sites that are that were hosted by

21:10

something called Freedom Hosting, which

21:12

apparently had a horrible reputation

21:15

for being the repository on

21:17

the web, on the dark web for child pornography

21:20

and knowingly like basically just not doing anything

21:23

about it. Um So,

21:25

the FBI had a They

21:29

hacked the Freedom Hosting

21:31

servers and inserted this

21:33

malware. So if you went to a Freedom

21:35

Hosting site, any of them, not just necessarily

21:38

a child pornography but any site hosted by Freedom

21:40

Hosting, which is like say go Daddy for

21:42

the dark web, um

21:45

you would get this malware package

21:48

that exploited a key hole

21:50

in Firefox's tore bundle.

21:53

It went into your computer, said hey, give

21:55

me your mac address, which

21:57

is basically like your computer hardware,

22:00

like serial numbers your

22:03

computers and your computers alans

22:05

tracking number, and then also

22:07

tell me where the computer is, and

22:09

it sent it back to a server, a mystery

22:12

server in McLean, Virginia. And

22:14

finally, after like a month, FBI was like, yeah,

22:16

that was us. We got We have everybody who went on

22:18

that site's name and address

22:21

and everything on them. So that's been a huge

22:23

ripple and Firefox fixed this loophole.

22:26

But it's a huge ripple through you know, the

22:28

dark web, deep web community

22:31

saying like whoa, whoa. We were anonymous

22:33

before, but you know now it's

22:36

it's been shown definitively that the

22:38

FEDS can find out

22:40

who we are. So the anonymity is

22:42

reduced, if not taken away, which

22:45

defeats the whole purpose. Yeah, so if you don't

22:47

have that, then you can keep lopping the heads

22:49

off of these things, and they're not going to grow back because people

22:51

are afraid. People will be afraid because

22:54

they won't feel like they're anonymous any longer. Well

22:57

tour has a sort of an

22:59

ironic background, which we will get

23:01

to right after this message break. All

23:19

right, so we're back and we left you with

23:21

the the nugget that tour has an interesting

23:23

background, and the background

23:25

of tours Actually, the US Naval

23:27

Research Laboratory in two thousand three launched

23:30

this program for political

23:32

dissidents and whistleblowers so they

23:34

can get their message out without fear

23:36

of reprisal. Right, and this is still

23:38

a use of tour Like the New York Times,

23:40

Wiki Leaks, some other news agencies

23:43

have um tour

23:45

sites that if you want to

23:47

go and contact the New York Times or

23:49

Wiki Leaks anonymously, like

23:52

you can go to their tour their onion

23:54

site and UM upload

23:56

documents or say hey, I have

23:58

some information I want to share, right, and you

24:00

can do it anonymously. So the government,

24:02

though, is basically law enforcements trying to track

24:04

down criminals using the

24:07

software that the government created to begin with.

24:09

So it's an interesting loop. Um.

24:12

But like we said, it's not all badness.

24:15

Um. If you live

24:17

in a country where bad things are

24:19

going on and you don't feel safe getting on

24:22

the regular web as a political dissident,

24:24

you can do so on the dark web. It offers

24:27

a virtual meeting place for

24:30

sometimes people are trying to, you know, combat

24:33

these oppressive regimes in their

24:35

countries, and they can't just hop

24:37

on Facebook and organize a meeting

24:40

because they'll get smacked down. Right, if

24:42

you're a person who values privacy

24:44

for whatever reason or no reason at all. UM,

24:48

the deep web and the dark web offer

24:50

file sharing services. Email

24:54

is a big one too, Like, I know, I

24:56

can't remember the name of the one Edwards Snowden has

24:58

been using, but I think it got shut down, like

25:00

just the whole company shutdown. Sorry, you're out

25:02

of business now because you're helping Edward Snowden.

25:05

UM. But there are other email

25:07

UM email services

25:11

basically everything you have on the web. If

25:14

you want to do it anonymously, you have to

25:16

go to a company that operates on the dark

25:18

web, right, that uses tour to

25:20

to route its information or your information.

25:23

Yeah. The University of Luxembourg

25:27

did a study where they tried to rank the most commonly

25:29

accessed stuff on the dark

25:31

Web, and sadly

25:33

what they did find a lot of things like child pornography.

25:36

There were also a lot of uh

25:39

sites and chat rooms for human rights

25:41

and freedom of information and

25:43

just people that don't want to

25:46

type in a search for, uh,

25:50

how to grow marijuana? And then the next

25:52

time they go to their Gmail account, they're

25:54

a bunch of ads for grow lights and

25:57

you're going, huh, how that happened? Well

26:00

to happen because you're searching

26:02

the surface web with an IP that

26:04

can be traced back to you, and not

26:06

even even illegal activities like that. You

26:08

know, you want to research a fitbit

26:11

bracelet and then you

26:13

go and they say, hey, Chuck,

26:15

are you fat? You want to lose weight? WHI

26:18

else? You want to fitbit? Alrightaddy,

26:21

why would you want to fit? And yeah, you're definitely

26:23

creepy. You know, there's the big brother effect.

26:26

I think everyone feels it. Uh.

26:28

There's all there, the existence of the deep web,

26:30

not necessarily the dark web, but just the deep web,

26:33

all of those pages of information

26:35

that are out there. Some companies have figured out

26:37

how to exploit it, or the fact

26:39

that search engines, normal

26:42

search engines, aren't doing a good job of

26:44

looking into the deep web. There that company, bright

26:46

Planet I mentioned they have a

26:48

deep Web Harvester, which

26:50

is basically a proprietary search

26:52

engine algorithm that goes into

26:55

websites and gets

26:57

everything like, it's not that doesn't them

27:00

an index. It grabs every bit of text

27:02

off of every site associated with

27:05

a u r L. That sounds like big data. It

27:08

is, but they're doing it for companies

27:10

like big pharma, big

27:12

government and saying like,

27:15

oh, you want to know what your competitors up to, Well,

27:17

here's every letter of

27:19

every word of every strip of text

27:22

on your competitor's website, including all internal

27:25

stuff everything. Please

27:28

give us ten million dollars for that search. Um.

27:31

There's also this site called Vocative which

27:34

uses something like bright Planets deep

27:36

web harvesting, but it does it for journalism

27:39

purposes, and it's basically, rather

27:41

than searching using Google you

27:43

or I would for a story idea, they're

27:45

um searching using a deep web

27:48

harvester to find all this other information

27:50

that we wouldn't be able to find because we don't

27:52

know how to search the deep web and writing

27:54

stories like that. And there's some pretty interesting stuff

27:56

that that sites put together already. Well,

27:59

when you think about if you're only getting if you think the

28:01

Internet is cool and you're only getting

28:03

point three of it, yeah, yeah,

28:06

not bad. And you know this is the webs the

28:08

surface web is getting deeper. The deep

28:10

web is getting deeper. Search engines

28:12

are searching deeper. It's it's all like and

28:15

they're trying to anonymize more

28:19

effectively. So it's it's like this cyber

28:21

war is going on. Oh, yes, you know,

28:24

that was another good one we did. What

28:26

do we do cyber war one? On cyber war you? Yeah,

28:28

I knew I've heard that before, so

28:31

there you go. I would have to say that this is one

28:33

of those episodes

28:35

where we did it, but

28:37

it is not done. No, no, Sometimes

28:40

we do them and it's like, that's it. There's nothing

28:42

more to say about this topic. Yeah, I'm interested

28:44

to see what happens with uh with old

28:46

Brick for sure. That's that's gonna be a

28:49

monument landmark case. You know. Uh.

28:51

If you want to know more about the deep web, you

28:53

can type deep web into

28:55

the search engine and how stuff works. It'll

28:58

bring back superficial results only how

29:00

stuff works stuff. But it's

29:02

pretty good, so you'll be happy. And

29:05

since I said search bar, that means it's

29:07

time for listener maw All

29:10

right, Josh, I'm gonna call this uh birthday

29:12

shout out that we rarely do. Okay,

29:15

hey, guys, I'm a longtime listener, shamelessly

29:17

writing to ask for a huge favor. Here's

29:19

the sitch. I first became aware of your

29:21

podcast with my last girlfriend, Natalie.

29:24

David introduced me to it when

29:26

we started dating, and i've heard it. Thank for getting me hooked,

29:29

as we spent a lot of time listening to your show and learning

29:31

together. As huge supporters of your podcast,

29:33

we were compelled last year to make the trip up from

29:35

Virginia to New York when you were putting on your

29:37

trivia night. And Natalie is the

29:39

one who gave us the mics on pants

29:41

off T shirts and David

29:44

her boyfriend. They were super cool, super nice.

29:46

They sat at the table right near us, so

29:49

I, uh, you know, got to know him a little bit. And

29:52

um, he says. Anyhow,

29:54

here's where the favor comes in. She moved to Shanghai,

29:57

China to teach and she's

29:59

teaching little kids English, and

30:01

sadly they you know, separated when

30:03

she moved over there, which

30:06

to me are always like the saddest breakups,

30:10

right like, there's nothing wrong to

30:12

China. So they just thought it was probably

30:15

the thing to do, but they, um, because

30:17

I inquired back to David emailed him about this, and it's

30:19

like, oh no, you guys broke up and said, yeah,

30:21

but we still really support each other and care about each other,

30:23

and hopefully our pass across again one day.

30:26

So anyway, Natalie David is in China,

30:28

and because of this distance, I was at a loss when

30:30

considering what to get her. He made a

30:32

donation to Cooperative for Education

30:35

in her name. And I know you guys like to read

30:37

those names of people who contribute, but in this case,

30:39

I was hoping you would just do a little something more special

30:42

by wishing her happy birthday. So on

30:44

January, which I think should be very

30:46

soon, Natalie, Happy birthday. Yeah,

30:48

happy birthday. We remember you. I wear that shirt all

30:50

the time. My wife thinks it's funny. And

30:53

uh, I hope you're doing well in China,

30:56

and don't give up on David just

30:59

because here in the stupid United States.

31:02

Her new Chinese boyfriends like what that guy?

31:05

She's like nothing, but wait, rewind

31:07

that. So um, anyway, I hope you're doing well over

31:09

there in China, and thanks again for all the support, and

31:12

I hope you guys, I hope your paths across again

31:14

one day. That it was very nice that is from David Austin

31:16

Bury. If you have a

31:19

special request for Chucker,

31:21

Me or US, you can tweet

31:24

to us at s y s K podcast.

31:26

You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff

31:28

you Should Know, and if you want to send an email

31:31

to Chuck, Jerry and Me, you

31:33

can address it to Stuff podcast

31:35

at how stuff works dot com.

31:40

Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's

31:42

How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my

31:44

heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple

31:46

Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Unlock more with Podchaser Pro

  • Audience Insights
  • Contact Information
  • Demographics
  • Charts
  • Sponsor History
  • and More!
Pro Features