Your first session on BlackOps, start to finish

Nothing about a first session is complicated. The only step people skip is the verification, and it is the only one that protects them, so it is worth going slowly the first time.

1. Install Tor Browser from the Tor Project

Download it only from the official Tor Project site and verify the signature on the first install. A copy from a forum, a torrent or a forwarded link is not something to trust with this. An ordinary browser cannot open a .onion address at all, so there is no shortcut here.

2. Set the security level

Open the shield icon and pick Safest. It switches off scripting everywhere, which removes a whole category of problems, and BlackOps works fine at that level. If any site insists you lower it, treat that as information about the site rather than about your settings.

3. Copy a verified address

Take one from the addresses block on this page. Paste it into Tor Browser. Do not retype it, do not correct it from memory, and do not use an address somebody sent you in a chat during an outage.

4. Read the login screen before you type

Compare the onion printed on the page against your address bar. They match or you close the tab. There is no third option, and this single habit removes almost the entire risk of using a market like this.

Setting up the account

Pick a username you have used nowhere else, including on other markets and forums. Generate a long password in a local manager rather than inventing one. Write the recovery phrase on paper and keep it away from the machine. Turn on PGP two factor so a leaked password by itself opens nothing.

No genuine login ever asks you to type the recovery phrase. A page that does is harvesting accounts, and the correct response is to close it.