Editorial policy
krasovin.online is an advertising-funded website about consumer security software. That funding model creates an obvious conflict of interest, and the only useful response to an obvious conflict of interest is to describe it precisely and then bind yourself to rules. This page is those rules. It is a commitment we expect to be held to, not a statement of aspiration.
1. Who writes this site
Editorial responsibility rests with Emma Jackson, director of publication and responsible editor for CLEANING SERVICES HAIOSH s.r.o., Zrzavého 1705/2a, Řepy, 163 00 Praha 6, Czech Republic. Every article carries a named byline and a publication date. There are no anonymous articles on this site and no articles attributed to invented personas.
We are not a security laboratory. We do not operate a malware testing facility, and we do not claim laboratory-grade capability. What we do is read the published work of the organisations that do have that capability, read vendors' own documentation and terms, and explain both in plain English for people who are trying to decide what to buy.
2. How we establish facts
Every factual claim on this site falls into one of four buckets, and we treat them differently:
| Type of claim | How we handle it |
|---|---|
| Independently testable technical facts (what a VPN encrypts, what an operating system includes by default) | Stated directly, with a link to primary documentation from the vendor or standards body concerned. |
| Test results and comparative performance | We cite the laboratory that produced them and link to its public report. We do not reproduce scores out of context, and we do not present a certificate from a past year as a statement about a current product. |
| Commercial facts (prices, plan contents, guarantee terms, availability) | Described only in general terms, with an explicit statement that the vendor's own published information prevails. These change constantly and we will not pretend otherwise. |
| Our own judgement (who a product suits, what is worth paying for) | Labelled as judgement in the text, with the reasoning shown so you can disagree with it. |
Where we cannot verify something, we say we cannot verify it, or we leave it out. We do not convert an unverified claim into a hedged one and publish it anyway as though hedging made it sourced.
3. How this site is funded
By affiliate commission, and by nothing else. There is no subscription, no paywall, no donation button, no display advertising network, no sponsored-post programme and no newsletter sponsorship.
If you follow a partner link and subsequently take out a subscription, the vendor pays CLEANING SERVICES HAIOSH s.r.o. a commission out of its own margin. Your price is identical to what you would pay by typing the vendor's address into your browser. Commission is paid on a completed subscription, not on a click, and we receive no personal data about you from the network — only aggregate reporting.
The advertising disclosure sets out the arrangement in full, including how partner links are labelled.
4. Advertiser independence
These commitments apply to every commercial relationship this site has:
- No pre-publication review. No advertiser, vendor or affiliate network sees, reviews, edits or approves an article before it is published. None has ever been shown a draft.
- No paid conclusions. We do not accept payment in exchange for a recommendation, a rating, a ranking position or a favourable sentence. Payment buys a labelled link, nothing else.
- No paid link insertion. We do not sell links in existing articles, do not accept guest posts, and do not publish text written by a third party under our byline.
- Criticism is not negotiable. A commercial relationship does not stop us writing that a feature is weak, that a claim is unsupported, or that a reader may already have what the product sells. This site's main article does all three.
- Losing a partner is an acceptable cost. If a vendor withdraws its programme because of something we published, the article stays as published.
5. What we refuse to publish
The following are prohibited on this site without exception. They are listed explicitly because they are common in this genre and because a promise that is not specific is not a promise.
- Fabricated testimonials. No invented reader stories, no made-up quotations, no "a reader wrote to us" framing for text we wrote ourselves, no stock photographs presented as customers. If we ever publish a reader's words, they will be a real reader's words, used with permission.
- Invented ratings and scores. No star ratings, no marks out of ten, no "editor's score" and no league tables that we have not earned the right to publish by doing the testing. Where scores exist, they belong to the laboratories that produced them, and we link to those rather than manufacturing our own.
- Artificial urgency. No countdown timers, no "offer ends tonight", no fake stock counters, no "only 3 licences left", no pop-up that appears when your cursor moves toward the address bar.
- Guaranteed-result claims. No product stops all malware, guarantees your privacy, or makes you anonymous. We will not write that one does, and we will not repeat a vendor's claim that one does without saying whose claim it is.
- Fear-based framing. No fake scan animations, no "your device may be at risk" headlines, no imitation of a system warning. There is a whole section of our main article devoted to helping readers recognise exactly this behaviour elsewhere.
- Fake independence. We will not describe this site as an "independent review site" while hiding that it earns commission, and we will not bury the disclosure below the fold. It is at the very top of every page.
- Invented statistics. No unattributed percentages, no "studies show" without a study, no round numbers invented to sound authoritative.
- Trademark confusion. We do not present ourselves as, or as endorsed by, any brand we write about, and we do not use vendor logos or screenshots in a way that would suggest affiliation. All illustrations on this site are original drawings of our own.
6. Comparisons and rankings
Where we compare products we compare them on stated criteria, we say what the criteria are, and we apply them the same way to every product. We do not rank by commission rate, and we do not present a ranking in which the top position was bought. If a page discusses only one product — as our main article does — we say so plainly rather than implying a field was surveyed.
7. Corrections procedure
- Write to info@krasovin.online setting out what you believe is wrong and, if you can, where the correct information can be found.
- We acknowledge correction requests within five working days.
- We check the claim against primary sources — vendor documentation, laboratory reports, the text of the legislation concerned.
- If we were wrong, we change the text. We do not quietly delete a sentence and move on: a significant correction is recorded in the corrections section of the article concerned, with what was wrong and what it now says.
- If we conclude the original text was correct, we write back and explain why, with the sources.
- Minor corrections — typography, a broken link, a formatting fault — are made without a public note.
The main article on this site carries a published list of the claims that were removed or rewritten when it was last revised. That list exists because the earlier version of the page did not meet this policy.
8. Updating and dating
Every article shows a publication date and, where it has been revised, the date it was last reviewed. When a page is substantively rewritten we update the review date rather than silently refreshing the original date to make old material look new.
9. Complaints about this policy
If you believe we have breached this policy, write to info@krasovin.online with the specifics. Complaints go to the director of publication, Emma Jackson, who is responsible for the answer.