NEXUS MARKET // WALKTHROUGH

Nexus Market onion tutorial and login walkthrough

Seven stages, from an ordinary machine to a sign in screen, with the checks that belong at each stage written next to it rather than collected at the end.

I//BEFORE YOU START

You need a client that speaks Tor. Everything below assumes the Tor Browser, because it is the option that requires the fewest decisions and makes the fewest of them badly on your behalf.

II//THE STAGES

1. 01Get the client from its own project. Download it from the Tor Project and nowhere else. A repackaged build from a mirror you found in a search result is the single easiest way to lose everything that follows.
2. 02Let it connect before you type anything. Wait until the browser reports that it has built a circuit. Pasting an address into a window that has not connected produces an error that looks like a dead service and is not one.
3. 03Copy one record with the button, not by hand. Hand transcription of a fifty six character label fails often, and it fails silently. Use the copy button above, then check the tail of the string once it is in the address bar.
4. 04Read the address bar before the page. Compare the last eight characters of what loaded against the record you copied. Do this every time, including the times you are certain, because certainty is what a lookalike is built to exploit.
5. 05Reach the nexus market login screen. A sign in prompt appears once the service answers. Nothing on this site ever produces that prompt, and no page here should ever be showing you one.
6. 06Treat a captcha as part of the check, not an interruption. Read the address bar again while you are solving it. That screen is where attention drops, which is exactly why it is a useful moment to look up.
7. 07If nothing resolves, change one thing at a time. New circuit, then a different record, then a fresh copy of the string. Changing three things at once means learning nothing from the result.

III//WHAT THE BROWSER WILL NOT TELL YOU

A page that loads over an onion address is a page that reached the service the address names. That is the whole of what the connection proves. It says nothing about who runs the service, what it does with what you type, or whether it will still be there in an hour.

The habit worth building is small and boring: read the bar, compare the tail, then read the page. It costs a couple of seconds and it is the only step in this walkthrough that catches the failure the others cannot.