Gateways are a safe shortcut
A clearnet onion gateway is a safe shortcut
How they work
A gateway is a website that lets you open an onion address in an ordinary browser, usually by appending a suffix. Underneath, the operator makes the connection themselves, fetches the page, and forwards it to you over the clearnet.
Which means everything passes through their machine in a form they can read. Not encrypted end to end to the destination. Usernames, passwords, second factor codes, messages, addresses, all of it readable by whoever runs the gateway.
What else it costs
- Anonymity from the destination. The connection arrives from the gateway, so the protection is protecting them and not you.
- Anonymity from your own network. You visited an ordinary clearnet domain, which is visible in ways an onion connection is not.
- The ability to verify anything. Signature checking assumes the page reached you unmodified. Through a gateway it reached you via a party who could change anything, so you verify whatever they chose to show.
- Knowing where you went. The gateway resolves the address. You are trusting it to have gone where you asked.
Honest operators do not fix it
Some gateways are run by people who wanted to make something accessible and have not thought the position through. Others exist precisely because the position is so good. You cannot tell which from outside, and the distinction matters less than it looks, because an honest operator is still one who can be compromised, compelled or replaced, and that would affect everyone who used it retroactively.
The lookalikes
Domains closely resembling the platform name, marketed as an easy way in. These are usually not gateways at all, because if the goal is collecting credentials there is no reason to build the proxying part. The tell is that they want you to log in, and a real gateway has no interest in whether you do. Anything on the clearnet asking for market credentials is collecting them.
The alternative is Tor Browser from the project directly, with the installer signature checked. A few minutes once, and the entire category of problem above disappears.