Last Updated: May 15, 2026
This page explains how HideThisPC earns money. We believe in clear disclosure — both because the FTC requires it for affiliate sites, and because hiding it would undermine the entire point of an honest review site.
The short version
Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. When you click one and sign up for a product or service, we may earn a commission. This does not change the price you pay, and it does not affect our reviews or rankings.
The longer version
We participate in the following affiliate programs:
- Proton Partners — Proton VPN, Proton Mail, Proton Drive, Proton Pass
- Impact Radius network — Surfshark, Incogni, and other privacy products
When you click an affiliate link from this site and complete a signup or purchase on the partner’s site, the partner pays us a referral commission. The amount varies by product — typically a percentage of your first payment, or a flat fee per signup.
What this means in practice
Your price doesn’t change. Affiliate commissions come out of the partner’s marketing budget. You pay the same price whether you click an affiliate link or type the partner’s URL directly into your browser.
Our recommendations don’t change. We rank products based on our methodology — not based on which company pays the highest commission. The clearest example: we recommend Mullvad VPN as our top choice in many situations, and Mullvad has no affiliate program. We earn $0 when readers sign up for Mullvad. We recommend them anyway.
We don’t recommend products we wouldn’t use. If a VPN pays high commissions but has a bad privacy track record, we don’t include it. If a product we have an affiliate relationship with does something we disagree with, we write about it honestly — including the criticism.
How to avoid using our affiliate links
If you don’t want to support this site through affiliate commissions, that’s fine — you can simply type the partner’s URL directly into your browser (e.g., protonvpn.com instead of clicking our link). You’ll get the exact same product at the exact same price.
We won’t pretend that doesn’t reduce our income — it does. But we’d rather earn smaller amounts from readers who genuinely want to support honest reviews than push everyone through tracking links they didn’t ask for.
Why we disclose this
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the United States requires affiliate sites to clearly disclose their relationships. Many other jurisdictions have similar rules — including the Competition Bureau in Canada and the ASA in the UK.
Beyond legal compliance, transparency about how a review site earns money is the bare minimum for trust. If a review site doesn’t tell you how it makes money from its recommendations, you should assume the recommendations are influenced by money in ways you can’t see.
Questions
If anything on this page is unclear, or if you spot a product review where you suspect the affiliate relationship may have influenced the recommendation, please email us. We take that feedback seriously.