Tutorial: How to Buy From BlackBank Market?
Posted by: DeepDotWeb
April 2, 2015
Now that Evo is gone and after we already did an agora tutorial – now its time for BlackBank. Well, obviously you’re here to learn how to buy something from BlackBank. I don’t care what it is, nobody cares what it is. Do not say what it is. In this guide we’ll be covering the process of creating an account, browsing the wares, choosing a vendor, buying a product, checking order status, and finalizing an order. Make sure you read this whole guide before proceeding, it’s important that you understand each and every step. This guide is for buyers of personal amounts, if you’re reading this and thinking of vending or buying to resell you should think really damn hard about what you’re about to do.
BlackBank market listing and url can be found here
Part 1 – Preparing
USE A VPN SERVICE. You can find one here to best suit you, we review the best VPN Services for privacy on the market. Every time you use your computer your IP address is shown which reveals your actual physical address which means you can be traced very easily. A VPN must be used along with Tor (Tor is the free browser explained below) to make your online activity anonymous. When using a VPN Service it will hide your identity and location while also encrypting all of you internet traffic from everyone including your internet service provider. This technology will also protect you from identity theft and hacking when using free wifi because everything is encrypted. Any time you are searching for music, movies to download, pirated content, drugs or anything illegal then you should be using a VPN to fly under the radar. The law is trying to monitor everything we do now so don’t make it easy for them, don’t end up like the original mastermind of Silk Road and get busted. This is a must have in your anonymous arsenal.
===> Read about the best VPN Services for privacy here <===
The first step is to set up your environment. The following is absolute minimum to keep yourself safe when buying personal amounts. Once you get this down, check out the Security Tutorials section for some extra tips on how to stay secure.
Tor Browser Bundle
You’ll want to head over to https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html to download the Tor Browser Bundle for your OS. If you need help installing, there are installation instructions for each of the three main operating systems on the download page.
PGP
PGP is a method of encrypting/decrypting messages. You do not want to be sending your address to vendors unencrypted. If the site gets seized, LE will have easy proof of your crime. You don’t want to go to jail, jail sucks. Keep in mind that not all versions of PGP are created equally and avoid using online PGP methods like iGolder.
We have basic guides covering PGP for each OS. GNU/Linux, OS X, and Windows. GNU/Linux is obviously the better choice, but you’ll be fine ordering personal amounts on OS X and Windows.
Bitcoin
Wallet
Now that you have Bitcoin, you need somewhere to store them. An excellent choice is Electrum. It’s cross-platform and even has an Android version. Go ahead and download it from this link https://electrum.org/download.html. It’s pretty simple and easy to use.
Part 2 – Some beginning tips
I’ll compile some beginning tips for new users. They’re from both personal experience and other stories around the web.
- Use your real name and address. Nothing is sketchier than getting mail delivered to your address with a fake name. Mail carriers are familiar with who lives where, and will report anything suspicious. You can get a PO box at your local postal office for fairly cheap if you’re living with other people and they have a tendancy to go through your mail.
- If you must use a fake name, at least have the proper documents to back that up. Fake ID and some utility bill scans should be good enough to open a PO Box under that name.
- Be patient. BlackBank isn’t Amazon, things do take time. Some vendors are known to mark as shipped right away, when they actually ship the next day. Shipping time can be delayed due to weather or holiday seasons. The only time you should bring this up is if you haven’t received your package after 14 days, or if Auto-Finalize is about to activate. More on that later.
- Encrypt any and every message you send. A few minutes of your time will save you a few years of rotting in jail.
- If you have a negative experience with a vendor, message them before leaving a review. 99% of the time they will go out of their way to sort you out, depending on their return policy. Being curteous and polite will get you far with this as well.
- Do not tell anyone you buy from the DNM. Not your friend, not your mother, not your deaf dog.
- Tumbling your coins using a service like Bitcoin Fog or Helix by Grams (http://grams7enufi7jmdl.onion/helix) is up to personal preference. For buying personal amounts this isn’t really needed, and will not be covered in this guide.
- If a listing is too good to be true, it probably is.
- Never FE. Even trusted vendors have been known to exit scam.
- Try to order domestic (within your own country). This will obviously be more of an issue for people not in Can/US/UK, but as long as the vendor has good stealth you should be good.
Part 3 – What is BlackBank?
BlackBank is a marketplace that was founded on January 7th, 2014, and offers a place for vendors and buyers to come together to serve each other. Items up for sale from vendors include drugs, fraud-related items, accounts for other online services, and counterfeit items. The most popular item, like 99% of other markets, are drugs. At the time of writing there are 681 different listings just for drugs.
Pros
- Multi-sig escrow
- Automatic PGP encryption using your public key
- Public, anonymous, vendor reviews
Cons
- Not many products compared to Agora
- Fees for user-to-user transactions
- Users don’t tend to leave feedback
Part 4 – Setting up your account
Creating an account
Simple process, head over to BlackBank and click ‘sign up’. Fill out the info, enter the captcha, and click ‘Create an Account’. Now you can sign in.
Before you start to even think about purchasing something, you should set up your account. You want to make sure you have a PIN set up, get your public PGP key uploaded, and set up two-factor authentication. At the top right of the page near your username, go to ‘Account Panel’ then ‘Settings’.
You should now be at your account settings page.
Setting your PIN
Your PIN is used when you’re withdrawing funds, and changing your public PGP key. You want to use something secure, and easy to remember. Without this you will not be able to transfer BTC to your wallet from the market. Enter a PIN, confirm it, then click ‘Save Changes’. You will get a warning saying that you haven’t set up your public PGP key, but don’t worry. We’ll cover that next.
Uploading your public PGP key
Hopefully you know how to get your public key. Click on ‘Edit Your PGP’, enter the PIN you just created, paste your public PGP key, then click ‘Save’. You’ll then get a pop up asking you to confirm that this is your key. Decrypt the message, paste it into the text box beside ‘Response:’, then click ‘Submit’.
After a few seconds it should bring you back to ‘Configure PGP’, but now with a green box that says ‘PGP Verified’. The last thing we’re going to do is click ‘AutoPGP DISABLED’ and click ‘ALLOW PGP DISABLED’ to enable AutoPGP, making sending and receiving messages easier. Your PGP settings should now look like this, and that’s it.
Setting up two-factor authentication
2-FA is yet another way to keep your account secure. You will not be able to access your account without your private PGP key, and admins will not reset your account. When logging in, it will encrypt a message with your public key and ask you to paste the decrypted message to confirm you are the owner of the account. Click the checkbox, then ‘Save Settings’. Now whenever you login you should see this pop up
Optional Settings
You can set up a profile page and change the theme. These are really self explainatory, but make sure to not post IRL information in your profile.
Part 5 – Choosing what to buy
Easy right? Not exactly. If you want to have a good experience you’ll need to do your research.
Searching
Searching for a product is pretty simple. The left sidebar has catagories, with subcatagories nested in those that apply. At the top there is a search bar. Just below the search bar there are options to sort the results, where they ship to, and if they offer escrow. You can always reset what you’ve done by clicking the ‘Reset’ button.
Escrow vs No Escrow
Escrow keeps your funds safe. BlackBank will hold your BTC until you confirm you received what your purchased by finalizing, which then releases the BTC into the vendors wallet. This protects you from scammers. If you never receive your product, or don’t receive the proper product, you can open a dispute to try to get your BTC back into your wallet. It’s generally recommended to never buy from someone that doesn’t offer escrow. You wouldn’t do that with a street dealer, you shouldn’t with a vendor. Even trusted vendors have been known to exit scam.
There is also an option for multi-sig escrow, but that’s beyond the scope of this guide. If you’re curious you can read about how it works here.
Domestic vs International
Choosing a domestic or international vendor depends on the amount of risk you want to take, and how fast you want what you bought. Ordering from a domestic vendor is usually safer, as your package doesn’t have to go through customs. Ordering from “hot” countries like Columbia, Netherlands, and Mexico carry even more risk due to the popularity of their products. Let the vendors do the importing for you. Obviously ordering domestic isn’t always possible but you should when you can.
Judging the vendor
Reading the vendors profile is a great way of judging the vendor and the product. People are usually quick to out a vendor for a fuck up, comment on quality, stealth, and shipping. Doing this from the vendors profile is easy. You can see their rating percentage, how many reviews they’ve had, and when they were last online. You don’t want to order from a vendor that hasn’t been seen for a week.
A few other great sources for reviews are the forums (link found on top right of the site), BlackBank Reddit Sub .
Part 6 – Making your order
So you’ve done your research, and have settled on a vendor and product. Now we get to the meat of the guide.
Adding funds to your market wallet
At the top left of the market page, you’ll see something like the above picture. These icons are for mail, your cart, amount of funds in your wallet, and amount of funds in escrow. Click on the Bitcoin icon.
You’ll be brought to your account summary which allows you to view past purchases, deposit funds, and withdraw funds. Go ahead and click on ‘Deposit’.
You should now see the above. You’ll want to send your BTC to that address, and make sure not to click on ‘Change address’ during the process. It’s also generally a good idea to deposit a little more than you’re planning on spending due to the fluctuating price of BTC. After making the deposit, it should only take 15 – 20 mins for the funds to show up in your market wallet, and another 30 – 40 for them to be available to you. The time depends on how fast the blockchain can make 3 confirmations on the deposit. There is a chance it could take longer, but just be patient. After the first confirmation you should see that you now have a balance pending additional confirmation.
When the funds are available for use you should see that reflected in your balance.
Ordering
Now that we have our funds, it’s time to buy. Head over to the product page, choose your shipping option, and click ‘Buy now’. This frame should pop up:
This is where you can confirm your purchase, how much it will cost, and fill out shipping details. Make sure you see the green button that says “PGP ENABLED”. If not, you’ll have to go back and enable it. Before filling out shipping details make sure the vendor doesn’t want the address filled out a specific way. Once you have it filled out, click ‘Buy’. It will now bring you to a page that shows your order details. Here you can check if it’s been shipped, if the vendor has accepted your purchase, and other details that are pretty obvious.
Once it’s been confirmed, you’ll see a few new options. You can extend auto-finalize, release escrow, or dispute escrow. Make sure to keep an eye on auto-finalize, you don’t want that to activate before you get your product or else your funds are gone. You can always extend auto-finalize if you’re still waiting on your product.
Receiving
So you got mail, awesome. If it looks like spam don’t throw it away. Vendors usually have good stealth, and some buyers have even thrown away their product thinking it wasn’t in there. Don’t do that. The very first thing you want to do after confirming you received the right product is click on the shopping cart icon to bring you to your order summary page. ‘Release Escrow’ on your order status section. This will release the funds to the vendor. You will not get a chance to reverse this! So make sure you actually received what you ordered.
If you didn’t receive what you ordered, click on ‘Dispute Escrow’. This will open a dispute with the vendor and a moderator as a mediator. Be calm and polite during this. Raging during a dispute is a great way to get it denied.
Part 7 – Conclusion
Hopefully following this tutorial helped you have a good experience on BlackBank. There is obviously more to BlackBank than what is in this guide, but this should get you set up and ready to order safely and securely. Keep an eye on more market guides coming soon!
Updated: 2015-04-02