The checks that keep you off a Nexus clone

Four checks, seconds each

1. Match the address before the password

The login screen prints the market onion inside the anti-phishing image and again in the header. Read it back against your address bar. A clone can copy every pixel of the design and still cannot get this right.

2. Take addresses from one place

Use the index rather than search results, chat messages or forwarded links. Every address here is checked before it goes up, which is a different thing from an address that merely looks plausible.

3. Never type the recovery phrase

No genuine login asks for it, ever. A page that does is harvesting accounts. Store the phrase on paper and treat any request for it as proof the page is fake.

4. Let escrow finish

Confirm receipt when the package is in your hands and correct, not before. Releasing early is the one action that converts a protected order into an unprotected gift.

Why this is the whole game

People rarely lose money on a market like this because the market failed. They lose it because they signed in somewhere that only looked like the market, or because they released escrow before the goods arrived. Both are choices made in a few seconds, and both are prevented by the checks above.

What a clone can and cannot copy

Assume a clone is perfect visually. It can lift the stylesheet, the images, the wording, the captcha layout and the header, because all of that is served to any visitor and can be downloaded in a second. Treating a page as genuine because it looks genuine is therefore not a check at all, it is a guess dressed up as one.

What a clone cannot do is print the market real onion in the places the market prints it while still being reachable at its own address. If the page tells you the correct address and your browser tells you a different one, the page is lying about what it is, and no amount of visual polish changes that. This is the whole reason the address comparison is the check that matters and the others are supporting habits.

Where clones come from

Mostly from searching. Somebody wants an address, types the market name into a search engine, and clicks a result that has been placed there for exactly that traffic. A smaller share arrive through forwarded links in chats, often passed along in good faith by somebody who was themselves caught. Almost none arrive through a bookmark, which is the practical argument for keeping one.