First order on BlackOps, start to finish

Everything in the database is a thing that can go wrong. This is the path when nothing does, which is most of the time.

1. Get Tor Browser properly

Download it only from the Tor Project site, verify the signature on the first install, and set the security level to Safest. An ordinary browser cannot open an onion address at all, and a copy from a forwarded link is not one to trust.

2. Open a verified address and check it

Copy an address from this site rather than typing it. When the login screen appears, compare the onion printed on the page against your address bar. They match or you close the tab, and that check is the single most valuable habit here.

3. Set the account up once, properly

A username used nowhere else, a long generated password from a local manager, the recovery phrase written on paper, and PGP two factor switched on. Ten minutes now, and a leaked password later stops being the end of the account.

4. Fund with Monero

Hold the coin in your own wallet first rather than sending straight from an exchange. Open the order, copy its deposit address, send the exact amount with the fee added on top, and expect roughly twenty minutes for confirmations.

5. Read the vendor before you commit

Recent feedback rather than lifetime totals, and how they answered complaints rather than how many stars they have. Start small with anybody untested.

6. Confirm only on delivery

When the package arrives and matches, confirm receipt to release escrow. If it does not arrive or arrives wrong, open a dispute instead. Never confirm early to be polite or to speed anything up.

What the first order is really teaching you

The point of a first order is not the goods, it is finding out whether your process works. Did the address check become automatic. Did the deposit land the first time. Did the vendor do what the listing said. A small order answers all of that for the price of a small order, and a large one answers exactly the same questions for considerably more.

That is why capping the first few is worth more than any other precaution here. Nobody loses money on their fifth order with a seller they have tested, and the database entries on this site are almost entirely populated by things that go wrong on a first attempt.

Timing, honestly

Expect the whole thing to be slower than an ordinary online purchase. Pages load through several relays, confirmations take around twenty minutes, and a vendor works to a dispatch window rather than to your schedule. None of that is a problem unless you treat it as one and start intervening, which is how people confirm orders early or send duplicate deposits.