The Cybersecurity Guide is free to read. We plan to pay for it with affiliate commissions. This page explains how that works, which programs we belong to, and what money never changes on this site.
How we make money
An affiliate program is an arrangement where a company pays us a commission when you buy through a link on our site. We call such a link a paid link. The company pays the commission. We do not charge you for the link, and we do not set the price: the company does.
Programs we belong to
As of October 27, 2026, we belong to no affiliate program, and no page on this site has a paid link. When a program accepts us, it will appear in a list on this page.
Our rule: no affiliate link, no publication
We do not publish a page that features a product we could earn a commission on until the program has accepted us and we have our paid link. That way, no page can recommend a paid product without showing you the notice below.
A page that simply explains something, such as how to lock down your home Wi-Fi, can go out without any offer. If such a page later gets a natural paid link, we add the notice on the day the link arrives.
How you will know
Every page with a paid link shows this notice before the first paid link, inside the article:
How we make money: We earn a commission if you buy through some of the links on this page. We rate every product with the same published method, whether it pays us or not.
The notice links to this page and to How we review. Next to every paid link, you will also see:
Paid link · We earn a commission if you buy.
We also mark each paid link as sponsored for search engines.
What programs can influence, and what they cannot
Programs can influence what we cover: the topics we choose, and the offer we feature in a video.
They never influence a score or a ranking. We make scores and rankings with the same method for every product, whether it pays us or not. A product with no affiliate program is rated by the same rules as one that has a program. Our method is on How we review. The scoring grid for VPNs will be published with our first VPN review.
Sponsored content
We publish none. If we ever do, it will be clearly labeled “Sponsored.”
Our YouTube channel
Our YouTube channel follows the same rules. In a video that features a paid link, we say it out loud and show it on screen when we make the recommendation: “If you sign up through the link in the description, we earn a commission.” The first line of the description puts “Paid link:” before the link and “we earn a commission if you buy through it” after it. The pinned comment, and any social post that carries a paid link, say the same.
Questions about how we are paid? Write to us through our contact page.