I3Awazon Market // record I3

I3 // No key to a PGP key

Genuinely strong at the one job it does. The reason the verdict is conditional is that people expect it to do three other jobs it has never done.

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

No key. Messages typed into the market interface, login by password alone.

Substitution

A key pair generated locally, the public half added to the account, messages encrypted before they are pasted.

What moves

The contents of a message stop being readable by the platform or by anybody who obtains its data later. Two factor login by challenge becomes available, which defeats a stolen password.

Does not move

Who you are talking to, when, and how often. Nor anything you sent before the key existed.

Cost

Real learning time, a private key that must be kept and backed up, and the risk of losing account access if the challenge becomes required and the key is gone.

Verdict

Only if you will use it consistently. Occasional use protects the occasions and creates confidence about the rest.

IThe two things it does

Encryption of contents is the obvious one. A shipping address encrypted to a vendor's key is unreadable by the platform, so a later seizure of the platform's data does not yield it. That is a strong property and it is the reason vendors ask for it.

Login by challenge is the second and is underused. The market encrypts a phrase to your public key and asks you to return it decrypted. Somebody with your password and no key cannot pass, which closes the attack in record I1 at the account level rather than the credential level.

IIThe three things it does not do

It does not protect metadata. That you messaged a vendor, at what time, and how many times, is all still visible to the platform.
It does not check addresses. A clone that receives an encrypted block simply stores it, and it already has your password from the same form. Record A2 remains the defence there.
It does not retroactively cover anything you sent in plain text before you started.

IIIWhere the key must live

01Generate it on your own machine, never on a web page that offers to do it for you. A generated key that somebody else saw is not a key.
02Set a passphrase on the private key, so the file alone is not enough.
03Back it up somewhere that survives the machine dying. If challenge login is enabled and the key is gone, so is the account.
04Verify a vendor key against a second source before encrypting anything to it. Encrypting to the wrong key delivers your address to whoever holds it.

IVThe honest condition

If you will encrypt every message, adopt it. If you will use it for the first two and then start pasting addresses in plain text because it is late, the result is a small amount of protection and a large amount of belief that the account is protected. That imbalance is the pattern described in the method, and it is the reason this verdict is not unconditional.

CONDITION

Adopt it if you will use it every time. Consistency is the property that makes it work, not the mathematics.