Affiliate disclosure
Last updated
Synthetic Technologies is reader-supported. Some of the links to VPN providers on this site are affiliate links. If you click one and subscribe, the provider pays us a commission. You pay exactly the same price. The commission comes out of the provider's margin, not your wallet, and in most cases the link carries a discount you would not get by typing the address in directly.
Which programmes we are part of
- Nord Security. NordVPN and NordPass. We are paid a commission on new subscriptions.
- Surfshark. We are paid a commission on new subscriptions.
No other provider mentioned on this site is linked under a commercial arrangement. That covers ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, ProtonVPN, IPVanish, PrivateVPN, PureVPN, Hotspot Shield, Ivacy, TunnelBear and VyprVPN. We earn nothing if you sign up with them, and we still recommend them where they are the better fit.
How to tell which links pay us
Commercial links carry rel="sponsored" in the page source, which is the marker
search engines use, and every page that contains one shows a disclosure box above the content.
You do not have to inspect the source to know: if the page has the yellow notice at the top,
it contains affiliate links.
What the commission does not buy
- No paid rankings. Position in our comparison table is set by the criteria published in our method section, not by commission rate.
- No paid inclusion. Providers cannot buy their way onto the page, and cannot buy their way off it either.
- No review approval. No provider sees, approves or edits our text before publication.
- No sponsored posts. We do not sell articles, guest posts or link placements.
Where we disagree with a provider we are paid by
We say so on the page. A commercial relationship does not buy silence about a price rise, a failed audit, a breach or a feature that has quietly been removed. If we ever cannot report something honestly while remaining in a programme, we will leave the programme.
Advertising restrictions we observe
Under the terms of the Nord Security programme we do not bid on branded keywords (“NordVPN”, “NordPass”, variants and misspellings) on Google Ads, Bing Ads or any other paid search platform.
Legal basis
This disclosure is made to meet the US Federal Trade Commission's Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (16 CFR Part 255) and the EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (2005/29/EC), which require commercial relationships behind a recommendation to be disclosed clearly and up front.
Questions
If anything here is unclear, ask: contact@synthetic-technologies.com.