The habits that keep you out of trouble

None of this is complicated. It is a short list of habits, and doing them turns nearly every common way of getting burned into a non-event.

Take the risks in the order they actually bite. By a wide margin the most common way to lose something is a phishing copy of the login, not anything about the market itself. That is good news, because it is the one thing entirely in your hands.

Beat phishing every session

Copy your link from a source you trust and never type an onion from memory. Then, every single time you sign in, read the address on the login screen back against your bar before your password goes anywhere. The real market prints its onion in the anti-phishing image and the header, and a clone cannot fake both. If they do not match, close the tab. That one habit removes most of the danger by itself.

Keep the account clean

A username used nowhere else, so it cannot be tied to an old identity. A long unique password from a local manager, never reused. The recovery phrase on paper, never typed into a login box. PGP two-factor switched on. Ten minutes once, and the account is quietly protected for as long as it lives.

Small balances, private coin

Only deposit what the order in front of you needs, and withdraw the rest to your own wallet. Whatever sits on a market is exposed to whatever happens to the market. And for anything you want kept private, pay in Monero, since that is the coin that leaves nothing on a public ledger to read later.