Notes
Three pages about the site rather than about the market. The first is the one worth reading, because a guide that tells you how to judge things should say how it arrived at its own judgements.
What is in here
- How this was put togetherWhere the material comes from and where the weak points are.
- The wordsTerms used in a narrow sense, and the ones that mean nothing.
- QuestionsDirect answers, including the ones nobody wants.
The short version
Nothing here is measured. It is a description of mechanisms that have been stable for years, written so you can check the reasoning rather than take the conclusion. Where a page states something as fact, it is the kind of fact you could confirm yourself in a minute. Where it makes a judgement, it says so and shows the working.
What this site refuses to publish
| Not here | Why |
|---|---|
| An uptime figure | Nothing here measures anything, and an invented number is worse than none |
| A last checked date | It would be a claim about right now that stops being true by lunchtime |
| A ranking of the addresses | Order on a page would suggest a judgement nobody outside can make |
| Vendor recommendations | There are no customers here to quote and no basis for it |
| Anything about products | A boundary this site keeps on purpose |
| Paid placement | Never offered, never accepted, and stated here so you can hold it to that |
Why the site is arranged as things rather than as topics
Most writing on this subject is organised by topic, which works if you already know what your problem is called. Somebody staring at a queue page does not know it is called a queue page, and searching for what is on their screen gets them advice about something else.
So the arrangement here follows what you are holding. If there is an address in front of you, go to the addresses room. If there is a screen, go to the screens room. The names of the specimens are deliberately plain for the same reason.
How to use it if you are not in trouble
- Read the addresses room once, properly. It is thirty minutes and it covers the most common way people end up somewhere they did not mean to be.
- Do the fingerprint collection. An hour, once, on a calm day. Everything in the signatures room is worthless without it and trivial with it.
- Skim the orders room before your first order, not after something goes wrong. Two of those pages describe mistakes that cannot be undone.
- Leave the rest. Come back to a specimen when you meet it.
The five sentences the whole site reduces to
- Compare the string, not the ends. Forgeries match the front and the back because that is what people read.
- Check a signature against a fingerprint you collected somewhere else. Anything else is a page vouching for itself.
- Screens prove nothing. They copy perfectly, so they come last.
- Hold no balance. Fund what you are spending and move the rest out when the order closes.
- Nothing real has a deadline. Anything pushing you to act today is telling you what it is.
Everything else on this site is the reasoning behind those five, which is there so you can keep the important half when one of them turns out to be inconvenient.