mistakes ยท post 01 of 7 in this channel
Typing a WTN onion address by hand
It is the most common mistake in this channel and the easiest to stop making, which is an unusual combination.
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.
when it happens
When the address is on a phone and you are at a computer. When it is written on paper. When it is inside a screenshot you cannot select text from. When the clipboard did not work and you gave up on it.
Notice that most of these are consequences of how you stored it. The typing is the symptom and the storage was the decision.
why it usually fails safely
Onion addresses carry a checksum, so most single character errors produce a string the browser rejects outright. You get an error and you try again.
That is the good outcome and it is what happens most of the time. It is also why people conclude that typing is fine, because the failures they see are all harmless.
the case that is not safe
A small fraction of errors land on a string that is valid and belongs to somebody else. There is no way to notice this from inside your browser, because everything about the page will look correct.
That fraction is small. It is not zero, and the consequence of hitting it is that you are typing your credentials into somebody else's copy of a login page.
You do not get told. That is the entire shape of the risk.
the confusable characters
Base32 has no zero, no one, no eight and no nine. So anything that looks like a zero is the letter o, and anything that looks like a one is an l or an i.
Knowing that turns several confusions into non issues. It does not turn transcription into a good idea.
what to do instead
Copy. There are buttons beside all three addresses at the top of this post, and there is more on this in copying rather than typing.
If they are on another device, move them as text. A file, a synced note you already trust, anything that carries characters rather than pixels.
And store them as text in the first place, so the situation where you have to transcribe never comes up.
if you must transcribe
Do it in chunks of four, checking each chunk as you go rather than at the end. Then check the length, then check the tail against the source.
That is slow and it is the only version of manual transcription that is defensible. If you are not going to do all of it, do not do any of it.
Half a careful method is not half as good. It is roughly as good as no method, with the added problem that you now feel you have checked something.
replies
a reader askedI typed it and it worked. Was that fine?
the answerIt worked, which means you did not hit the bad case. It does not mean the method is sound, in the same way that one lucky crossing does not make a road safe.
a reader askedWhat if the copy button does not work?
the answerSelect the text and copy it manually. That is still copying, and the button is only a convenience on top of the thing that matters.
a reader askedIs it safer to type a shorter part and complete it?
the answerNo, and it is worse. Autocomplete on partial addresses is exactly how a saved wrong address gets used, since your browser is helping you reach whatever you visited before.
what this post is not Not a claim that a typo will take you somewhere hostile. It usually will not. The post is about the fraction of the time that it might, which is not a fraction you can observe.