Affiliate disclosure

The rule

Every category on this site lists a free or open-source option first. Affiliate links come second. We will never recommend a paid-only option when a free one does the same job well enough for most readers. When we link a paid product we earn a commission on, the category page carries an explicit disclosure banner above the fold.

Commissions do not influence ranking. Hero picks are chosen on privacy posture, audit history, threat model fit, and UX — in that order. If a non-affiliate alternative is genuinely better, it is the hero pick and the affiliate partner is relegated to alternatives.

Current partners

• Proton

  Scope: Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Drive, Proton Pass

  Swiss, E2EE mail, audited, has a real free tier.

• Privacy.com

  Scope: Virtual payment cards

  US only. Single-use numbers that defeat most cross-merchant profiling.

• smspool

  Scope: Disposable phone numbers

  For signup flows that demand SMS. Not for 2FA on anything you care about.

• Bitwarden

  Scope: Password manager (paid tier)

  Open source. Free tier is usable. Paid unlocks TOTP, 1GB attachments, family.

• Brave

  Scope: Browser + Brave Search Premium

  We are cautious here — we link Brave, but we flag its crypto baggage on the category page.

• Kagi

  Scope: Paid search engine

  Search that works for you, not for advertisers. Paid only, by design.

• Obsidian

  Scope: Sync + Publish

  Local-first notes. The app is free; Sync is the paid product.

• Ente

  Scope: Photo + Auth

  E2EE photo vault and a clean open-source TOTP app.

Declined partnerships

We have declined partnerships with several VPNs and affiliate aggregators that wanted to pay for rankings. If we decline in the future, we will name them here. The list is empty of specifics at launch only because we have not yet been asked in writing — not because it is not already happening.

Editorial note: this section will be filled in with names and dates as offers come in. No NDAs, no quiet refusals.

How commissions work

When you click an affiliate link and sign up for a paid plan with a partner, the partner pays us a one-time or recurring commission. The amount varies per partner and is not disclosed individually because contracts change. Aggregate commission data will be included in the first audit report committed for the six-month mark.

Commissions fund hosting, time, and the scanner backend. If commissions ever cover more than operating costs, the surplus is disclosed in the changelog and reinvested directly in open-source privacy tools we already link from this site — Proton, Bitwarden, GrapheneOS, Mullvad, SimpleX, uBlock Origin — via their public donation pages.

FTC 16 CFR Part 255

Per US FTC endorsement rules, we disclose affiliate relationships in-context (on the page where the link appears, above the fold) and globally (here). We do not use "#ad" hashtags because this is not a social platform, but the intent is the same: you know when we are being paid.