Related sites the Bureau reads
A short list of external sites that are worth reading, and one longer list of sites to avoid.
Reader sites
Tor Project. torproject.org and its documentation. Authoritative on hidden services, guard nodes, descriptor propagation. The download page is where Tor Browser comes from.
Monero Project. getmonero.org for the wallet software and the manual on Monero mechanics. Reliable.
Feather Wallet. featherwallet.org for the Monero wallet software the Bureau recommends for desktop.
Sparrow Wallet. sparrowwallet.com for the Bitcoin wallet software the Bureau recommends for privacy-aware Bitcoin.
Sites the Bureau avoids
Third-party Tor market directories. Most are outdated. Some list phishing clones alongside real addresses without distinguishing. The Bureau does not link to any such directory as a source of Nexus addresses.
Ranking sites. Sites that rank Tor markets by some scoring system. The scoring is usually opaque, the operators of the ranking site usually have undisclosed financial interests, and the rankings shift for reasons that have nothing to do with market quality.
Chat channels claiming to be Nexus support. Nexus support is on the on-storefront message system only. Any Telegram, Signal, Matrix, IRC or Discord channel claiming to be Nexus support is an impersonation.
YouTube tutorials on Nexus. YouTube is not a good format for content that changes with every operator rotation. Tutorials there age poorly and are often demonetised-then-updated by phishing operators taking over old channels.
The Bureau's own external presence
The Bureau does not maintain accounts on Twitter, Reddit, Telegram, Signal, Discord, or any other platform. If you see an account claiming to be the Bureau on any of those, it is an impersonation.
How to judge a reference site
Ask whether it says where its addresses came from, whether it distinguishes what it observed from what it inferred, and whether it publishes anything it cannot check. A site that publishes a live uptime percentage for a hidden service is claiming something no observer can honestly know, because reachability is a property of the circuit between a visitor and the service rather than of the service alone.
Why no directory should be your only source
Every directory is a party you have to trust, this one included. A signed announcement from the operator removes that requirement, because verifying it does not depend on where you obtained the copy. Where signed announcements exist they beat any directory, and a directory that tells you so is more useful than one that positions itself as the authority.
The pattern behind bad sources
Sites that appear at exactly the moment a familiar address goes quiet, that rank for address queries and nothing else, and that carry no material a reader would return to. None of those are proof of anything on their own. Together they describe the shape of a page built to catch people during an outage, which is the only moment anybody searches for a marketplace address.