How This Site Makes Money
Some links on this site are affiliate links: if you sign up through them, we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That never changes a score or the order of a ranking. How we rate →
That is the whole business model. There are no ads, no sponsored posts, no paid listings, and no products of our own.
What a commission doesn’t change
- Your price. The vendor pays the commission out of its own margin. The checkout total is the same whether you arrive through this site or type the address yourself.
- The score. Grades come from the test account, the checkout run and the documents, on the scale published on the methodology page. A service with no program is scored the same way.
- The order of a ranking. Rankings are sorted by score, and ties are broken by the Results grade. A higher commission doesn’t move a service up.
- What gets reviewed. Services without a program don’t get their own review pages, because the site can’t afford to produce them. They still appear in rankings and comparisons in the position their score earns, with a plain link and no button.
- What the page says. No vendor sees a page before publication, and no vendor can edit one afterward. Corrections come from readers and from re-checks, with the date on the page.
Affiliate programs we’re in
Status as of 10/08/2026. No amounts are published, and none will be until a commission has actually been paid. “Not applied” means the site has not yet filed an application. “Pending” means an application was filed and not yet answered.
| Service | Network | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Optery | PartnerStack | Not applied |
| DeleteMe | Everflow | Not applied |
| Incogni | Vendor’s own program | Not applied |
| OneRep | Vendor’s own program | Not applied |
| Aura | Impact | Not applied |
| LifeLock | CJ Affiliate | Not applied |
| 1Password | CJ Affiliate | Not applied |
| NordPass | Vendor’s own program | Not applied |
| Proton Pass | Proton Partners | Not applied |
| Keeper | Vendor’s own program | Not applied |
| RoboForm | Everflow | Not applied |
| LastPass | Vendor’s own program | Not applied |
| NordVPN | Vendor’s own program | Not applied |
| Proton VPN | Proton Partners | Not applied |
| Surfshark | Vendor’s own program | Not applied |
| PureVPN | Vendor’s own program | Not applied |
| Private Internet Access | Kape affiliate platform | Not applied |
| CyberGhost | Kape affiliate platform | Not applied |
| Proton Mail | Proton Partners | Not applied |
| Cloaked | Impact | Not applied |
Until a program is approved, the button on a review page leads to the vendor’s site without any tracking parameters, and the site earns nothing from the click. The button and the disclosure line under it stay the same either way, so the page doesn’t change when a program is approved.
Proton’s program requires an affiliate disclosure on every page with a Proton link. The line under the first button and the line in the footer are that disclosure.
Tools we cover without any affiliate relationship
These services appear in rankings and comparisons. The site has no affiliate program with any of them, earns nothing when you sign up, and links to them with a plain link.
Bitwarden · Dashlane · KeePass · Mullvad · Kanary · Privacy Bee · Identity Guard · IdentityForce · IDShield · Experian IdentityWorks · Zander · Privacy.com · SimpleLogin · Tuta · MySudo · Gmail
Free programs from banks and credit bureaus (credit freezes at Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, free monitoring from card issuers) are not vendors. Where a page mentions them as a first step, the link is plain.
What we don’t do
- No coupon pages or promo-code roundups. If a vendor has a public promotion, the free-plan page says so with the date.
- No paid placements, “featured” spots or sponsored reviews.
- No links to vendors outside the
/go/route. - No tracking parameters that pretend to be affiliate links.
- No bidding on vendor brand names in search ads.
- No amounts on the site until a commission has been paid.
How to spot an affiliate link here
Every affiliate link on this site has three marks:
- The address starts with
/go/, for example/go/optery-top. The part after the vendor name says where on the page the button sits. - The link carries
rel="sponsored nofollow"in the page code. - The first button on a page has the line “Affiliate link · how it works →” under it, which leads here.
A link to a vendor without /go/ in the address is a plain link, and the site earns nothing from it. Pages with no affiliate links at all, like this one, say “This page contains no affiliate links.” at the bottom.
Legal framework
This disclosure follows the Federal Trade Commission’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, 16 CFR Part 255. Where an affiliate network’s terms are stricter than the Guides, the network’s terms apply on pages that link to that vendor.
Questions
If a line on this page is unclear, or if you think a link isn’t marked as it should be, write through the contact page.
This page contains no affiliate links.