Who sees what, when you use Awazon market

This is an exposure catalogue. Every ordinary action in and around Awazon market gets one card, and each card names the parties who can observe that action, says what they actually learn from it, and says just as plainly what they do not.

Most writing about a darknet market is arranged by task. Find the address, reach the site, make an account, send a payment, wait for a parcel. That arrangement is useful once, on the first day, and then it stops answering the only question people keep asking, which is some version of "who can tell that I did that".

So this site is arranged the other way round. It is filed by observer. Seven parties can watch some part of what happens when someone uses a market like this one, and each of them has a completely different view. The company that sells you your internet connection knows something. The volunteer running a relay knows something else. The server on the other end knows a third thing. The person who packs the parcel knows a fourth. None of those four views overlaps as much as people assume, and confusing them is the single most common mistake a reader arrives with.

The seven observers

Each observer has a hub page and six cards. The hub explains what that observer structurally can and cannot see. The cards take one specific action each and work it through.

Your networkThe access provider, the router in the flat, whoever runs the wifi you joined. Sees that a connection happened, when, and roughly how much moved.Six cards The Tor networkGuards, middle relays, and the exits that an onion address never touches. Each position in a circuit sees a different slice and none sees the whole thing.Six cards The market serverThe plainest observer in the list. It receives what you type, because it cannot render the next page without receiving it.Six cards The vendorThe only observer here who is a person, with a memory, a filing habit and a risk profile you cannot see.Six cards The postWhere the internet stops mattering. A parcel is a physical object moving through a system built to record where things went.Six cards Your own deviceThe best seat in the house and the longest memory. It sees plaintext because it has to draw it on a screen.Six cards The people around youThe observer nobody models. Not enemies, just people with memory who are under no obligation to your arrangements.Six cards All of them at onceThe seven observers laid out side by side, with what each one holds, where the record lives, and how long it tends to last.Compare

What a card contains

The shape never changes, so you can read the same slot on any two cards and compare them directly.

The action, in plain words. No jargon in the first two sentences.
Who sees it. This is the amber line under the title, and it is the first thing on the page after the summary.
What they learn, concretely. Not "your activity". The literal field, the timestamp, the shape of the record.
What they do not learn, concretely, at the same length. This half is the reason the site exists.
What changes the answer. A numbered list of the things that genuinely move the needle, each one honest about what it fails to fix.
What the card is not. One or two sentences refusing to overclaim.

Every card is also linked to the cards it touches. Placing an order and typing a delivery address are two different actions with two different observer lists, and reading them together is more useful than reading either alone. Start anywhere. The catalogue lists all forty two in order.

The two mistakes people arrive with

The first is overestimating the network. A reader who has been told that "the ISP can see everything" tends to spend all their attention on the first hop and none on the last one. The connection is the part of this that is most thoroughly covered by design. The parcel is not covered at all, because a parcel has to arrive somewhere.

The second is underestimating the boring observers. A backup service that copies a photo library every night is not an exciting thing to think about, and neither is a housemate who signs for a delivery, and neither is a clipboard buffer shared by every application on a laptop. Those three see more, and keep it longer, than any relay operator ever will.

Both mistakes have the same root, which is that people picture an observer as someone who is looking for them. Almost none of these observers is looking for anybody. They hold records because holding records is what they do, and the records were made for reasons that have nothing to do with any individual.

What this site will not do

It does not test the addresses. There is no uptime figure here, no status light, and no date of last checking, because nothing is ever checked. An address that opens is not proof of anything.
It does not rank the three addresses, label them, or suggest one is better. They are printed exactly as supplied, in the order supplied, at the top of every page.
It does not invent numbers. No percentages, no counts, no dates, no quotations, no named cases. Where a real figure would be needed to make a point, the point is made without one or not made at all.
It does not sell anything, carry advertising, take affiliate money or accept paid placement. There are no accounts here, no forms, no cookies and no tracking.
It is not a manual for defeating anybody. Every card describes what an observer sees. None of them describes how to blind one.

Where to start

If you have five minutes, read the card on exits and onion addresses, because it corrects the most widespread misunderstanding on the subject, and then read the one on the address you hand over, because it is the piece of information that no amount of network privacy touches.

If you have longer, the observer comparison is the fastest way to see the whole shape at once, and the catalogue runs through every card in order.

Open the catalogue Compare the observers

Questions that come up

Is this site run by Awazon market?

No. It has no connection to the market, no arrangement with anyone who does, and no way to act on any account, order or payment. It is a reading aid written from the outside, and it earns nothing from anybody.

Why are there no uptime figures or status lights?

Because this site never contacts the addresses it prints. Publishing a status would mean probing, and probing is something it has decided not to do. The three addresses at the top of every page are shown exactly as they were supplied, with nothing added.

Are the three addresses ranked or is one of them the main one?

They are not ranked and none of them is described as primary, official or verified. They appear in the order they were given, with no labels and no numbering, and this site takes no view on any of them.