This reading walks through your first login on WeTheNorth from the moment you paste an onion address to the moment you land on the storefront home.

Nine steps

  1. Copy any onion address from the mirror reference page.
  2. Paste it into the Tor Browser address bar.
  3. Press return.
  4. The anti-DDoS wait page appears. It holds you for 20 to 60 seconds while the counter decrements.
  5. When the counter finishes, the captcha renders.
  6. Read the small text at the bottom of the captcha image. Compare against your URL bar. Match wins. Mismatch means phishing clone, close the tab.
  7. Solve the captcha.
  8. The login form renders. Type username, password, submit.
  9. The storefront home page loads.

What to do if a step fails

Wait page never decrements. Bad circuit. Close the tab, use New Identity from the browser menu, retry.

Captcha never renders. Same fix as above.

Address bar shows a different string than the captcha. Phishing clone. Close the tab. Open the mirror reference from your bookmark and try again from a fresh copy.

Storefront home loads but looks off. Rare but possible if you are actually on a very good clone. Log out immediately, do not perform any transactions, verify against a signed rotation before logging back in.

Do the captcha check every session

Not just the first time. Every session. Bookmarks can be poisoned (rotation happens, old address survives briefly, phisher grabs the string, spins up a lookalike). The captcha check is the last line of defence at the point of login.