This page explains how recommendations on this site are made, what we will and won’t cover, and the rules we bind ourselves to so that a recommendation means something. The operator is pseudonymous; the methodology is not. Trust here is meant to be earned through conduct you can check, not through a name.
The five-tier system
Every tool we cover is sorted into one of five tiers. Every comparison displays the tier of every tool it covers — including the ones we don’t recommend, and the ones we earn nothing from.
| Tier | Meaning |
|---|---|
| S | Confirmed safe to recommend, and verified first-hand — we have used it ourselves and it held up, with the trade-offs documented. Where we earn a commission, it is paid in crypto with no identity disclosure required of us, and that funding never buys a tier. |
| A | Recommended, with notes. One mild concern worth knowing before you commit: a short cookie window, a jurisdiction worth weighing, a feature gap. Tools we’ve researched thoroughly but not yet tested first-hand sit here too, labeled as sourced rather than tested. |
| B | Conditionally recommended. Specific use cases only. You’ll need to weigh the trade-offs against your own threat model. |
| C | Not recommended. A material concern stands in the way — a verified customer-trust failure, an incentive conflict, or a limitation that outweighs the upside for most readers. |
| D | Actively warned against. Exit scams, verified loss of customer funds, repeated breach history, or ownership by an entity whose incentives conflict with its users'. |
Reviews, overviews, and warnings
We call something a review only when we’ve used the tool ourselves — and only a tool we’ve tested first-hand can reach Tier S. Where we’ve researched a tool thoroughly but haven’t put our own hands on it yet, we publish an overview instead, label it as sourced rather than tested, and note whether a hands-on review is planned.
Warnings work differently. A tool can be placed in Tier C or D — not recommended, or actively warned against — on documented evidence alone: a verified breach, an exit scam, a malware incident. We don’t need to have used a tool to warn you away from one with a public security failure.
How a tool earns Tier S
A tool reaches Tier S only when its claims hold up under checks we can show our work on:
- We have tested it ourselves. Tier S is reserved for tools we have used first-hand and can report on directly; research alone, however thorough, caps a tool at Tier A (see Reviews, overviews, and warnings, above).
- Its limits are documented. A Tier S rating describes what the tool does not protect against as plainly as what it does.
- Its ownership and jurisdiction check out. We look at who owns it, where it operates, and any parent or shareholder relationship that could compromise users — and we publish what we find.
- No major customer-trust failure in recent history. Exit scams, undisclosed fund losses, undisclosed breaches, or a quiet jurisdictional change that exposes users will keep a tool out of Tier S.
- Where money changes hands, it’s disclosed. If we earn a commission, it’s listed on the affiliate disclosure. The commission has no bearing on the tier.
A Tier S rating is never locked. A tool can be moved down at any time.
How a tool loses Tier S
Tier S is revoked when any of these occur, and the revocation triggers a published article explaining the change:
- A verified security incident, breach, or loss of customer funds.
- Acquisition by an owner whose incentives conflict with users'.
- A material degradation in the service, tracked through public review channels and our own continued use.
- A change that quietly increases what the service collects, or that compromises the jurisdictional footing the rating relied on.
When a tool we recommend dies — shuts down, has its support collapse, or suffers a security event — we withdraw the recommendation, record what happened, and point to an alternative within 30 days.
Independence rules
To keep recommendations independent of revenue, we bind ourselves to these rules:
- Funding never buys a tier. If a Tier A tool offers a higher commission to be moved to Tier S, the answer is no.
- We recommend tools we earn nothing from. Where the best fit pays us nothing — Mullvad among VPNs, for instance — we say so anyway. These recommendations exist precisely to show that the money isn’t steering the verdict.
- We disclose conflicts inline. Where a comparison includes a tool we use ourselves or have a deeper relationship with, that relationship is stated in the article, not buried in a footer.
- No sponsored content, ever. We don’t accept paid placements, guest posts, or “sponsored” reviews. Every word here is editorial.
How we’re funded
Affiliate commissions paid in cryptocurrency, from operators that don’t require identity documents to pay us. We deliberately skip the mainstream networks — Impact, CJ, ShareASale, Awin, PartnerStack — because they require that disclosure, the same exposure this site helps readers avoid. It costs us reach, and we take the trade. We run no display advertising and accept no sponsorships; the FTC mechanics are on the affiliate disclosure page.
Sourcing standards
For factual claims, we label confidence:
- [HIGH] — three or more independent sources, with verifiable links in the article.
- [CONFLICTING] — where reputable sources disagree, we publish the disagreement rather than pick a side for you.
- [UNVERIFIED] — one source, not yet triangulated. Marked explicitly, to be read with caution.
We treat a vendor’s own claims, a regulator’s findings, trade reviews, and user reports as different grades of evidence, not interchangeable ones. First-hand testing, where we can do it, outranks all of them.
AI tools assist our research, fact-checking, and structural editing; nothing here is published from a model without human editorial review, and we don’t present one as a human expert.
What we don’t cover
There’s a line, and it’s the same one named on the About page. This site serves operational privacy. It does not help with fraud, money laundering, sanctions evasion, or defeating identity checks for financial crime. In practice that means we don’t publish how-to guidance for evading identity verification, we don’t build or endorse tools whose purpose is to break it, and we don’t cover the specific instruments — coin-anonymizing services and the like — whose primary use is laundering provenance. We cover tools that reduce what’s collected about lawful operators; we don’t cover tools for getting away with crimes.
Corrections
Errors are corrected with a visible note at the bottom of the article. We don’t silently edit factual claims. When a correction materially changes a recommendation, we publish a separate notice and link to it from the top of the article. Every comparison carries a “last updated” date and is reviewed at least once a year, or sooner when a trigger event occurs.
If you find something here that violates these standards, tell us and we’ll correct or remove it.