A fake mirror is not a bad copy. It is a perfect one. The design is served to anyone who loads it, so a phishing page can reproduce every pixel, every logo, every button, and it will look exactly right. That is the trap. If looking right were enough, there would be no problem, and the fact that there is a problem means looking right is worth nothing. The only thing that tells you where you actually are is the address in the bar.
The check that works is a comparison, not a memory. You do not try to remember the address, because you will not, and a long string of letters is not something a human holds reliably. You compare what is in your address bar against what the market itself says the address is. Several of these shops do the work for you: they print the real onion address inside the login captcha, or they reprint it in the page header on every refresh. A copy of the page can fake the design, but it cannot sit at the real address, so it has to show the wrong one somewhere. Find where, and you have your answer.
Do it every time
Do the comparison before you type a password, every time, not just the first time. The reason is that the address set rotates. The address that was real last week may be a copy this week, and the copy is waiting for the people who stopped checking because it used to be fine. A bookmark that pointed at a real mirror last month is a bookmark that points at a trap the moment that mirror is rotated out, which is exactly the moment you go looking for a replacement and are most likely to click the wrong thing.
Two more tells, because they are cheap. If a page that is supposed to have a wait or a queue drops you straight onto a login, it is probably a copy, because the real one runs the check on purpose. And if a link arrived in a direct message or a forum comment rather than from the market’s own announcement channel, treat it as untrusted until you have matched it. The announcement channel is the source. Everything else is a claim about the source, and claims are what fakes are made of.
Read this first
darknet.center is a reference service. We list addresses and explain how each shop works, but we do not operate any of them and nothing here makes a purchase lawful in your jurisdiction. Verify every address against the market’s own announcement before you type a password.