Affiliate disclosure

Effective date: 17 September 2026

Protective Shield earns money from affiliate commission. This page explains who pays it, what triggers it, what it costs you, and what it does and does not influence about the pages you read here.

The arrangement, in one paragraph

Gormet s.r.o., the publisher of this site, participates in an affiliate programme through an advertising network. Certain links on this site lead to the Crossout website. When a reader follows one of those links and goes on to register and activate an account there, the network pays Gormet s.r.o. a commission. That payment comes from the advertiser's marketing budget. It is not added to anything you pay, and no payment by you is involved in the commission being earned at all.

Which links are paid

Paid links on this site are the ones pointing to the Crossout website. At the time of the last review they appear in two places: once on the homepage and twice on Step 6. Every one of them is accompanied, at the point where it appears, by a sentence saying it is paid. They are marked in the page code with rel="sponsored nofollow" and they open in a new tab.

Everything else is not paid. Links to Australian government bodies such as the ACCC, the Australian Cyber Security Centre, Scamwatch, the eSafety Commissioner, the OAIC and Australian Classification earn us nothing and exist because those bodies are the authority on what the surrounding text discusses. Internal links between pages of this site earn nothing.

What it costs you

Nothing. There is no surcharge, no different price, no reduced offer and no change to the terms on the other side of the link because you arrived from here. A reader who types the destination address directly and a reader who follows our link encounter exactly the same thing; the only difference is that in the second case the network records where the visit came from.

What the commission does not determine

• The wording of any page. No advertiser, network or other third party sees, approves or edits these pages before publication. Nobody outside Gormet s.r.o. has editorial input.
• Whether reservations appear. The list of things the publisher's material does not state, on Step 6, is longer than the list of things it does. That list stays whether or not it suits the arrangement.
• The advice in Steps 1 to 5. That material carries no paid links, and it includes advice — wait before spending, check the classification, keep payment methods off shared machines — that works against the commercial interest rather than for it.
• Any ranking. There is none. This site ranks nothing and scores nothing.

What does determine the coverage

Two things, and it is worth being blunt about the first.

The choice of which product is covered in depth is commercial. Step 6 profiles Crossout because that is the title Gormet s.r.o. has an arrangement relating to. It was not selected by comparison, testing or merit, and we make no claim that it is better or worse than anything else in its category. A site that covers one product while being paid for that product should say so in those words, and this is us saying so.

The content of the coverage is determined by what can be attributed. Product statements come from the publisher's own description. Claims about Australian law, classification or safety practice link to the responsible body. Where neither is available, the text is phrased as general guidance or is left out. That constraint is the reason Step 6 reads the way it does.

Why disclosure is not optional

Under the Australian Consumer Law, misleading or deceptive conduct in trade is prohibited, and it is enforced against the publisher of the statement as well as the advertiser. A recommendation that looks independent while being paid for is the textbook example. The ACCC, which administers that law, publishes guidance on advertising and selling, including on disclosure in online content. We would rather over-disclose than rely on a reader not noticing.

No data is collected when you follow a paid link

Protective Shield sets no cookies, runs no tracking script and operates no redirect of its own. A paid link on this site is a plain link whose destination is visible in your browser's status bar before you click it. We do not know who follows it, we do not receive any personal information about you from the network, and we receive no report identifying individual readers. What the destination site does once you arrive is governed by its own policies, which are worth reading. Our own position is described in the privacy policy and the cookie policy.

Questions

If anything about this arrangement is unclear, write to info@protectiveshield.online and we will answer. If you would prefer not to contribute to the commission, visit the destination site by typing its address into your browser instead; nothing on this site is withheld from you either way.

Published by Gormet s.r.o., Vojtěšská 211/6, Nové Město, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic. Company number 09582541. VAT CZ09582541.