Editorial policy

Version 2.0 · effective 22 September 2026

This page is the standard we hold ourselves to. It is written in specific terms rather than general ones so that a reader can tell whether we have broken it.

1. Who writes

All editorial content on pravator.online is written by Sandra Moore, who is the responsible editor for the publication and is named in the legal notice. Every article carries her byline, a publication date and a last-reviewed date.

We do not use invented author personas, we do not publish under a generic “team” byline to diffuse responsibility, and we do not publish material written or supplied by an advertiser under an editorial byline. If an advertiser ever supplies content, it will be labelled as advertiser-supplied on the page and will not carry a journalist’s name.

Where drafting tools are used to assist with structure or phrasing, every factual statement is checked against a primary source by a named human being before publication, and that person is accountable for it. A tool is never the source of a fact.

2. How facts are established and sourced

Our rules of evidence, in order of preference:

1. Primary sources first. A product’s feature set comes from the vendor’s own current product and support pages, not from another publication’s summary of them. A legal requirement comes from the instrument itself.
2. Independent testing comes from the laboratory. Where we refer to protection testing, we name the laboratory — AV-TEST, AV-Comparatives, SE Labs — and point readers to the current published report rather than quoting a figure. A score is valid for one product version, one month and one sample set; reprinted on an affiliate page it becomes marketing.
3. Sources are named on the page. Every article ends with a sources section listing what it was built from.
4. We hedge what we cannot verify. If we cannot confirm something, we say we cannot, or we attribute it explicitly to whoever does claim it. “Norton’s product page states” is a different sentence from “the product does”, and we use the one we can stand behind.
5. We never invent a number. No statistic, price, percentage, detection rate, device count or technical specification appears on this site unless we took it from a source we can point to. If a figure changes too often to be printed reliably — a price, for instance — we describe the mechanism and tell you where to look it up instead.
6. The publisher’s own information prevails. Where anything we write diverges from what the product’s publisher or the retailer states at the point of sale, theirs is correct and ours is stale. We say this on every article.

3. How the site is funded

Entirely by advertising and affiliate commission. When a reader follows a partner link and buys, the advertiser pays us a commission. There is no paywall, no subscription and no sponsorship of editorial content.

The commercial relationship is disclosed in three places on every page that carries a commercial link: a bar at the very top of the page, a disclosure box before any promotional content, and a note directly beneath every button stating that we earn a commission and that it costs the reader nothing extra. Commercial links are labelled “partner link” in the visible text of the button itself and carry rel="sponsored nofollow noopener". Full detail: affiliate disclosure.

Commission rates do not vary the editorial line. We do not accept payment for a favourable conclusion, for a position in a list, or for the removal of a criticism.

4. What we refuse to do

Specifically and without exception:

• No fabricated testimonials. We do not invent reader stories, customer quotes or first-person accounts. We do not present advertising copy as a reader’s experience. The previous version of this site was framed as “Reader Stories”; that framing was untrue and we removed it.
• No invented ratings. No stars, no scores out of ten, no “editor’s choice” badge, no award we did not confer through work we actually did. We have run no laboratory tests, so we publish no test scores of our own.
• No artificial urgency. No countdown timers, no “only 3 left”, no “offer ends at midnight”, no fake visitor counters, no exit-intent pop-ups engineered to panic someone into buying.
• No guaranteed-result claims. No security product can guarantee you will not be compromised. We will not write “complete protection”, “100 % safe” or “total peace of mind” as though they were factual descriptions.
• No fear-based selling. We will not overstate a threat to move a product. Where the honest answer is “the protection built into your operating system may be enough”, we say so even though it costs us the sale.
• No implied endorsement. We do not use a vendor’s logo or artwork in a way that suggests a relationship we do not have, and every page carries a trademark disclaimer.
• No undisclosed commercial links. A link that earns us money is labelled every time, without exception.

5. Advertiser independence

• No advertiser sees an article before publication, and none has approval, review or veto rights over any part of it.
• No advertiser can commission, edit, soften or withdraw a criticism.
• Editorial conclusions are reached before any commercial arrangement is considered, and an existing arrangement does not protect a product from an unfavourable assessment.
• Where a page is about a product we earn commission on — as this site’s main article is — we state that fact on the page itself rather than burying it here.
• We name the product’s shortcomings and the free alternatives on the same page as the purchase link. If that costs us commission, so be it; a review that cannot say no is not a review.

6. Corrections procedure

We correct errors openly. The procedure is:

1. Report it to info@pravator.online, saying which page, which statement, and what you believe the correct position is. A source helps but is not required.
2. We acknowledge within three working days.
3. We verify against a primary source. If we cannot resolve it either way, we say so and soften the statement rather than leave a contested claim standing.
4. We correct the page and update its last-reviewed date.
5. We record the correction visibly where the error was material — that is, where a reader might have made a different decision because of it. A material correction is described on the page itself, saying what the page previously said and what was wrong with it. We do not silently delete and move on.
6. Serious errors — anything that could have led a reader to spend money on a false premise — are corrected as a priority and flagged prominently.

There is a live example of this on the site now: the Norton article carries a correction notice listing six claims removed from an earlier version of that page, including two that materially misdescribed what the product includes.

7. Review cycle

Every article is reviewed at least every six months, and sooner if we become aware of a change in a product’s feature set, price structure or platform support. The last-reviewed date on each article is real and is updated only when a review actually happens.