Mission
Comparitech strives to promote cyber security and privacy for everyone. We are committed to providing detailed, up-to-date information to help our readers become more cyber secure and cyber aware.
We carry out detailed research and testing to help consumers and businesses make more informed decisions when purchasing cyber security products. See our software testing methodology for more details on how we test and review products and services.
Our editorial staff consists of reviewers, editors, data analysts, cybersecurity experts, and journalists, all of whom pledge to uphold our mission.
Ethics
Comparitech’s editorial team aims to publish accurate, unbiased, and up-to-date information that our readers will find useful. To do so, we adhere to the following rules and principles:
- All articles are reviewed and fact checked by editors to ensure quality and accuracy, prevent omissions of fact, and reduce bias.
- Although we do our best to be objective in most respects, Comparitech always advocates for consumer privacy and an open internet.
- If we discover a data incident or software vulnerability, we always responsibly disclose the issue to the owner or developer as soon as possible and wait for it to be secured before publishing information about it.
- When contacting sources, we clearly state who we are and what we do. We adhere to journalistic principles when contacting sources and clarify whether a conversation is on the record, off the record, or on background.
- Our reviewers are instructed to review products and services honestly and without bias. We only recommend products that we are happy to use ourselves.
- When sourcing information from third-party sources, we always provide attribution.
- Some of our work involves examining cybercrime. We do our best to balance consumer-friendly information about how cybercrime is carried out without giving prospective criminals detailed instructions on how to carry out attacks.
- If a writer has a personal or financial conflict of interest with a company or product, we ask them to disclose this information to their editor. In that event, we will take steps to assign a different writer.
- We do not accept guest posts.
- We do not discriminate against products, services, companies, employees, or sources on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, language, religion, disability, or age. In some instances, however, we might dissuade readers from using cybersecurity services in countries with anti-consumer policies, such as those engaged in online surveillance or that have personal data retention requirements.
- We do not condone or encourage any violation of copyright restrictions, including software and media piracy.
How we make money
When we list a product, service or app in a review or an article, we’ll usually link to it. Some of these links allow us to earn a referral fee if you, the reader, goes on to sign up for the service, which in turn helps us fund the site.
We never allow this paid relationship to compromise our integrity. We are committed to putting our readers’ interests first. We only review products and services we have thoroughly tested, and we only recommend those that we are happy to use ourselves. If we don’t like something, we will say so regardless of any commercial relationship.
Articles containing affiliate links from which we stand to make money are clearly labeled.
We maintain a firewall between our editorial and commercial teams. Affiliate links and accompanying text are added to articles by a commercial team member after the review is completed, so as not to compromise the reviewer’s integrity.
Read more on how we make money in our advertiser disclosure statement.
Updates, corrections, and retractions
We update site content as frequently as possible to keep information relevant and up to date. These updates are usually made to existing pages and do not appear as separate articles.
Occasionally, we get something wrong. In such an event, we immediately take steps to correct the review. Depending on the nature of the error, we might publish a retraction indicating when and why the correction was made. Such a retraction might appear in the text adjacent to the correction, at the top of the article, or at the end of the article. The bigger the mistake, the more prominent our retraction will be.