Monero is the coin most Tor shops want. Buying it without handing over your ID takes one more step than buying Bitcoin on Coinbase, but the step is not hard once you know which service to pick.
Phishing onions look exactly like the real one because nobody remembers 56 random letters. The fix is not memory, it is a PGP signed announcement. Verifying one takes about a minute.
Tor Browser out of the box is safe enough for reading the news. For anything you would rather nobody link back to you, spend five minutes on the settings below.
Tor Browser hides your traffic. It cannot hide your operating system. For anything more than casual browsing on Tor you want the OS itself to be the sandbox. Three options: Tails, Whonix, and Qubes with Whonix.
Classic escrow means the shop holds your coins alone. When a market exits, the shop wallet leaves with everyone. Multisig turns that single point of failure into three.
A fake mirror will look identical to the real one down to the pixel. It has to, or nobody would type their password. The tells are almost never visual.
Vendors ask for FE because they want the money now. Buyers say yes because they are new and think being polite matters. Both of those are bad reasons to give up your only safety net.
Most people who get caught do not get caught by the shop or by law enforcement breaking Tor. They get caught by mistakes on their end. Ten habits fix nine tenths of it.
