The arrangement
Celinopex s.r.o., the publisher of Synthworks Online, participates in the affiliate programme operated for TotalAV. When a reader follows a link from this site to that vendor and subsequently takes out a subscription, the vendor's affiliate programme pays Celinopex s.r.o. a commission for the referral. That commission is the only way this site is funded.
The vendor pays it, out of a sale it has already made. It is not a surcharge, it is not added to your total, and it does not alter the price you are shown. A reader who reaches the same checkout by typing the vendor's address into a browser pays exactly what a reader arriving from here pays. The only practical difference is whether this publisher is credited for the referral.
What the payment buys
It buys coverage, and coverage only. The commercial relationship is the reason TotalAV is the one product examined in detail on this site, out of a category containing many. That is a real editorial consequence, and hiding it would be the dishonest part.
Being open about it is what makes the rest of the site usable: once you know the boundary of the library, you can read everything inside it accordingly.
What the payment does not buy
- Not the content of any page. No vendor reviews, approves or edits anything published here before or after publication.
- Not favourable wording. Limitations are described where they exist, including the limits of what any security product can do on a given platform.
- Not a rating. There are no scores, stars, badges or awards anywhere on this site, so there is nothing for a commission to inflate.
- Not test results. This publisher runs no laboratory tests and reprints none. No detection figure appears on this site in any form.
- Not silence about alternatives. Pages here routinely point out free protections already built into Windows, Android and iOS, and free public services in Australia, including where those reduce the case for buying anything.
How paid links are marked
Every paid link on this site is identifiable in three ways at once, without needing to hover over anything:
- A disclosure box in the upper part of the page, in normal body text, before the first paid link on that page. It is never collapsed, never in small print and never placed below the link it explains.
- A line of text immediately beside the link itself, stating that it is paid, who pays, and that your price is unchanged.
- A technical marking in the link, using the
sponsoredandnofollowattributes that search engines define for exactly this purpose.
Links here point directly at the destination. There is no redirect hosted on this domain, no link shortener, no script that rewrites a link when it is clicked, and nothing that changes where a link goes depending on who is following it. The address shown by your browser is the address you will reach.
What determines the order and the content
Coverage depth follows the commercial relationship, as stated above. Everything else follows the rules set out on how comparisons here are built: product claims come only from the vendor's own statements, general claims link to the body that says them, and nothing that cannot be supported is published. The order of items within any comparison on this site is determined by the criteria named on that page, which are stated before the comparison so they can be disputed.
Your position as a reader
You are under no obligation to use a link on this site, and the pages are written to be useful whether you do or not. If you would prefer not to generate a commission, go to the vendor directly — nothing here is withheld from readers who do.
No page on this site suggests that you need to buy anything, and none of them can tell you anything about the state of your own device. Buying nothing, and instead applying the free measures described throughout this library, is a legitimate outcome of reading it.
Legal context
Under the Australian Consumer Law, misleading or deceptive conduct in trade is prohibited, and a publisher carrying paid links is subject to that prohibition in its own right. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission administers that law. The disclosure practices described on this page exist to meet that standard rather than to gesture at it.
Trademarks
TotalAV and all other product names, logos and brands mentioned on this site are the property of their respective owners. Synthworks Online is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of them. Product names are used descriptively, to identify the products being written about.
Questions
Questions about this arrangement can be sent to info@synthworks.online. The publisher is Celinopex s.r.o., Zenklova 24/54, Libeň, 180 00 Praha 8, Czech Republic; company number 11833262; VAT CZ11833262.