I see a lot of information here about learning to use PGP and so forth, but much security does a small time buyer realistically need? I mean, I have no intention of becoming a vendor and – if and when I take the plunge – will only be occasionally buying gear in recreational quantities from vendors within my home country. As I’m such a small fish, do I really need to worry about encrypting my address when sending it to a vendor, or being especially cautious about covering my tracks when purchasing Bitcoins?
Another issue regarding security – where are the best places to get the current SR URL? I get the URL off SR’s Wikipedia page, but obviously (due to the nature of Wikipedia) it would be easy for phishers to change that to a phoney site – even if they only had the fake URL for a few minutes before someone else changes it back, that would be enough time for them to capture a handful of usernames and passwords. Other options?
PGP is absolutely essential! It's not about becoming a vendor, it's about protecting your information should a vendor or the Silk Road servers be compromised. You need to treat Silk Road as if it were already compromised by LE; safety and security is of the utmost importance.
Regarding the URL, you should absolutely not be using an address that you find ANYWHERE online. You need to either bookmark it (if your Tor Browser Bundle is stored in an encrypted file/folder or you're using TAILS) or else memorise it:
silkroad
vb5
piz3r
Phishers know the second that someone has entered login details to the site, and are probably running scripts that automatically change the users passphrase and PIN, withdrawing the victim's BTC in seconds.
Please read the SR Wiki - it contains necessary information that you really need to know:
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
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