Editorial policy

Last updated: 21 September 2026

This site is funded by advertising. That creates an obvious tension with writing honestly about the products advertised. This page sets out the rules we work to, so you can hold us to them and tell when we have failed.

Who writes here

Editorial content on vestrovia.online is written and signed by Thomas Cooper, who is the responsible editor and director of publication for Black Shark s.r.o.. Articles carry a name and a publication date. We do not publish anonymously, we do not use invented pen names, and we do not publish text supplied by an advertiser as though it were our own.

Where a draft is prepared with research or drafting assistance, the named editor reviews every factual claim before publication and remains responsible for the published text.

How facts are established

Our sourcing order is deliberate:

1. The vendor’s own published documentation for what a product contains: product pages, comparison tables, licence terms, privacy notices, support articles.
2. Independent test laboratories for detection and performance claims — AV-TEST, AV-Comparatives and SE Labs, all of which publish their methodology.
3. Public guidance from cyber-security authorities such as ENISA and the UK NCSC for general security advice.

Sources are named in the article. Claims we cannot source are either hedged in plain language (“typically”, “at the time of writing”, “we have not measured this”) or left out. When a figure changes frequently — a price, an allowance, a test score — we point you to the current source instead of freezing a number into the page, and we state explicitly that the vendor’s own information prevails over ours.

How this site is funded

Black Shark s.r.o. earns affiliate commission. When a reader follows a link marked “partner link” and subscribes to the product, the vendor or its affiliate network pays us a commission. The reader pays no more than they would going direct. We receive aggregated commission reports; we do not receive readers’ personal data, payment details or account information.

Commission is paid on referrals, not on conclusions. Nobody pays us more for a favourable article, and no advertiser sees or approves our text before publication. Traffic to this site is bought through advertising platforms, which is another reason the content has to stand up: those platforms prohibit misleading claims, and so do we.

What we refuse to do

• No invented testimonials. We publish no “reader stories”, no reader-submitted experiences and no quotes from people who do not exist. Earlier versions of this site were framed as a reader story; that framing has been removed because it was not true.
• No invented ratings. No star ratings, scores out of ten or “editor’s choice” badges that are not the output of a documented test. We are not a test laboratory and we will not imitate one.
• No fabricated statistics or specifications. No percentages, detection rates, user counts or benchmark figures that we did not take from a named source. If we did not measure it, we say so.
• No artificial urgency. No countdown timers, no “only 3 licences left”, no fake stock levels, no expiring discounts we invented. Promotions belong to the vendor and are described as the vendor describes them.
• No guaranteed-result claims. No product stops every threat. We will not write that one does, and we will not imply it with absolute language.
• No impersonation. We do not present ourselves as the vendor, as a news organisation we are not, or as an official body. We do not use vendor logos or brand styling to suggest an affiliation that does not exist.
• No hidden advertising. Every commercial link is marked as a partner link in the visible text and in its HTML attributes, and the disclosure appears above the fold, before any promotional content.

Independence from advertisers

The advertiser has no right of review, no veto and no influence over the text. We write the limitations of a product as plainly as its strengths: this site’s main article states which advertised features the reviewed tier does not include, points out that a bundled password manager is available free of charge separately, and tells readers that the operating system’s built-in protection plus good habits is a defensible alternative. If a product cannot be written about honestly and still be worth recommending, we write the honest version.

If we ever conclude that a product we are paid to refer is not worth a reader’s money, we say that in the article and the commercial link goes on saying “partner link” next to it.

Trademarks and affiliation

Third-party product names are used for identification and commentary. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Gen Digital Inc., Microsoft Corporation or any other company named in our articles.

Corrections procedure

1. Write to info@vestrovia.online, naming the page and the specific claim, and including a source if you have one. Postal mail reaches us at Black Shark s.r.o., Kaprova 42/14, Staré Město, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic.
2. We acknowledge on receipt and aim to reply substantively within five working days.
3. A clear factual error is corrected promptly. The corrected page carries a dated note in its corrections section describing what changed. We do not quietly overwrite a claim we published.
4. Where a claim was materially misleading rather than merely imprecise, the note says so.
5. Typographical fixes that change no meaning are made without a note.
6. If we disagree that something is an error, we tell you why, and we publish your objection alongside the claim if you ask us to.

The same address handles right-of-reply requests from any company written about here.

Privacy of readers

Editorial independence extends to not surveilling readers. This site sets no cookies, loads no third-party resources and runs no analytics. We cannot see what you read, and we have chosen not to be able to. See the cookie policy.