C1 // Tor Browser to something else

Several browsers can reach an onion address. None of them reproduce the reason Tor Browser exists, and the difference is not about whether the page loads.

Awazon Market // onion addresses

The three strings below open the same market. The same account, the same balance, the same open orders sit behind each one. Copy a string, paste it into Tor Browser, and read the last six characters in the address bar before you type a password.

awazonozc4jwyrveu4473igv5ldt2hnccl2s7lerm2z27cvrc22e4uyd.onion
awazonth6ocz5cyos63czmhtsglqr7ydkdcc4lopux7nxbauoo2qmvyd.onion
awazonvaqbgkhirejon6qnlxcjibrhkqhzh2xb2lclc6t67vxhlvjkyd.onion

NOTHING HERE IS RANKED. THE ORDER IS THE ORDER THEY WERE WRITTEN IN.

Baseline

Tor Browser, unmodified, current release.

Substitution

Any other client that can reach an onion: a browser with onion support built in, a normal browser pointed at a SOCKS proxy, or a plugin that claims the same.

What moves

Your machine stops looking like every other Tor Browser user and starts looking like itself: fonts, screen size, language, extensions, graphics behaviour, timezone.

Does not move

Nothing improves. Onion routing still happens if you configured it correctly, and the page still loads. The market treats the session identically.

Cost

A fingerprint that distinguishes you from everyone else on the network, plus, in the proxy case, a real chance that some traffic never entered Tor at all.

Verdict

Costs more than it moves. There is no upside column to weigh against it.

IThe point of a uniform browser

Tor Browser is not simply a browser with routing attached. Most of its engineering is spent making every copy of it look the same to a page: the same window dimensions offered, the same font list, the same behaviour from the drawing and audio interfaces, the same timezone, the same language header. The protection is statistical. You are hidden inside a crowd of identical clients.

Substitute a different browser and you leave that crowd. The routing may still be intact, but the page now sees a machine with your particular fonts, your particular window size, and your particular set of extensions. On the clearnet that combination is often unique. It does not stop being unique because the connection went through Tor.

IIThe proxy version, which is worse

Pointing an ordinary browser at a local SOCKS proxy feels like it should be equivalent. It is not. Ordinary browsers make requests that do not respect the proxy: prefetching, update checks, extension telephone calls, and name lookups that go out over the normal connection. The first name lookup that escapes is a record of exactly what you were about to open, sent in the clear, from your own line.

IIIThe browsers that advertise onion support

A handful of mainstream browsers route onion addresses through their own arrangement. They will open an Awazon address. What they do not do is the fingerprint work, and several of them add their own identifiers on top. Convenience is real here and it is the only thing being bought.

IVWhat this substitution shares with the VPN one

Both feel like the same thing done differently, and both leave the address bar untouched. If you take one habit from the client group, take the slider in record C2, which costs almost nothing and removes an entire class of attack. Do not take this one.

IN ONE LINE

The routing was never the hard part. The uniformity was, and it is exactly what a different browser throws away.