The darknet encryption technology routes users' data through a large number of intermediate servers, which protects the users' identity and guarantees anonymity. Identities and locations of darknet users stay anonymous and cannot be tracked due to the layered encryption system. Tor browsers create encrypted entry points and pathways for the user, allowing their dark web searches and actions to be anonymous. Tor browser and Tor-accessible sites are widely used among the darknet users and can be identified by the domain '.onion'.

The dark web, also known as darknet websites, are accessible only through networks such as Tor ('The Onion Routing' project) that are created specifically for the dark web. The Tor dark web or onionland uses the traffic anonymization technique of onion routing under the network's top-level domain suffix. Users of the dark web refer to the regular web as Clearnet due to its unencrypted nature. The darknets which constitute the dark web include small, friend-to-friend peer-to-peer networks, as well as large, popular networks such as Tor, Freenet, I2P, and Riffle operated by public organizations and individuals. The dark web forms a small part of the deep web, the part of the Web not indexed by web search engines, although sometimes the term deep web is mistakenly used to refer specifically to the dark web. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communicate and conduct business anonymously without divulging identifying information, such as a user's location. The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on darknets: overlay networks that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. For the part of the Internet not accessible by traditional web search engines, see Deep web.

Dark web onion tor