Read as a sign of trouble and almost always the opposite. The overlap is the part worth understanding.
- What it literally says
- That addresses are being changed.
- What it actually means
- New addresses enter the published set while old ones are still working, and only later do the old ones stop. The overlap exists so somebody who checks in once a month sees both at once.
- What it does not mean
- That anything is wrong, or that you need to act quickly. Addresses get retired because attention accumulates on them, not because of an incident.
- What to do
- Compare what you have saved against the published set every few weeks, and delete anything no longer listed.
- If it looks different
- A rotation notice carrying a deadline is a forgery. Real ones run long overlaps precisely so nobody has to hurry.
CommonPeriodic
Needs actionUpdate your list
Warning signAny deadline attached
Why addresses get retired
Accumulated attention. An address public for a long time sits in every scraped list, archived post and abandoned directory, and a growing share of what reaches it is automated scanning and whatever flooding is aimed at it that week. At some point a fresh one serves readers better than the familiar one does.
What a rotation is never announced with
- A deadline. Migrate within some number of hours. Real ones overlap for exactly this reason.
- An address and nothing else. The whole message existing to move you somewhere is the shape of a forgery.
- An excuse for a missing signature. Key rotated, the forum stripped it, will sign later. All the same lie.
- A request touching credentials. Notices inform. They never ask.
The genuinely hard oneThe hardest case is a notice claiming the signing key itself has changed, because anyone holding the old key could sign a handover with it. No single message settles that. What settles it is consistency across independent places over several days.
Retirement versus an outage
| What you see | What it is |
|---|---|
| One address down, back within hours | Ordinary. The set exists for this. |
| One address down for a week, others fine | Retired. Delete it rather than keep trying. |
| All down, other onion services fine | Something shared. Wait. |
| A long dead address answering again | Not a recovery. |