getting in ยท post 01 of 7 in this channel
You need Tor Browser before any WTN market link does anything
If you paste one of the addresses above into an ordinary browser, nothing happens. Not a slow load, not an error you can fix. Nothing.
the three wethenorth market addresses
hn2paw7zfvndw3dovycegeqmvvnf4pl67b3g2p7pohjlzavloosh73id.onionhn2paw7zrgujyhnt6mgxlt2q6uhgbke4itpqitxhyfbumq3wtnckbuyd.onionhn2paw7zadwkcra3qzv5e4q547i7e5lvxm62cfxqftuqdu7moiu2ceyd.onionprinted the way they were handed over. no labels, no numbering, nothing here says which one to try first. this feed never opens them, so it has no status light, no percentage and no date of checking to give you.
why an ordinary browser cannot help
Your normal browser resolves names through the public naming system. It asks a resolver, it gets an address back, it connects. That machinery has no idea what onion means, because onion is not part of it.
So the browser does the only thing it can. It hands your text to a search engine, and you end up looking at results for a fifty six character string instead of at a market.
Some browsers show an error instead. Neither outcome is a fault you can configure your way out of.
what tor browser adds
Tor Browser ships with the client that knows how to reach onion services, and it routes your traffic through the network before anything reaches the far end.
That is not a plugin you bolt onto a browser you already have. It is a different browser, built on Firefox, configured deliberately, and it is the thing that makes an onion address mean something.
Get it from the Tor Project itself. This is one of the few pieces of advice on this feed that is simple and has no caveat attached.
the impulse to make it convenient
Almost everyone tries the same shortcuts in the same order. An extension that promises onion support. A gateway site that puts onion in a normal domain name. A phone app that says it does the same thing.
Each one is a third party you have introduced into the connection, and each one can see traffic that Tor Browser would have kept between you and the far end.
The convenience is real. The cost is that you have quietly replaced the design of the thing with an imitation of it.
do not fiddle with it
Tor Browser arrives set up. The temptation is to make it comfortable: sign into things, resize the window to fit the screen, install the extensions you like, turn off the parts that get in the way.
Every one of those makes your browser more distinctive. The default configuration is boring on purpose, and boring is the entire point.
Leave it alone. The version of it you would find pleasant is a worse tool than the version that shipped.
then, and only then, the address
Once Tor Browser is open and connected, copy one of the three addresses above and paste it in. Do not type it, for the reasons in the post on copying rather than typing.
The first load will be slow. That is covered in slow is the normal state and it is not a sign of anything.
replies
a reader askedCan I use a VPN instead of Tor Browser?
the answerNo. A VPN moves where your traffic appears to come from. It does not teach any browser how to reach an onion service, so an onion address stays meaningless with one running.
a reader askedWhat about those sites that let you open onion links normally?
the answerThey fetch the page for you and hand you the result. Everything you send passes through whoever runs the gateway, in a readable form. That is a different arrangement from the one Tor Browser gives you, and it is not a smaller one.
a reader askedIs there a phone version?
the answerThere is an official Android build from the Tor Project. Anything else calling itself a Tor browser on a phone store is somebody else's software with a familiar name on it.
what this post is not Not an installation walkthrough. It explains why the browser is the first requirement rather than one option among several, and it does not step through setup screens.