About

We built the privacy
resource we couldn't find.

Most privacy sites are either funded by VPN companies, plastered with trackers, or written by people who think everyone should run Tails OS on a Faraday cage. We wanted something in between. Useful tools, honest reviews, and guides that normal humans can actually follow.

How We Operate

Our Principles

Privacy-First Analytics

We use self-hosted Plausible for anonymous page view counts. No cookies, no personal data, no fingerprinting. We see which pages are popular but not who visits them.

Tools Run Locally

Our privacy tools run in your browser. Your fingerprint scan and checkup results never leave your device. The IP check uses third-party APIs (disclosed on the tool page) but results are not stored on our servers.

Honest Reviews

Affiliate links keep the lights on. Companies can also pay for coverage (not scores). Neither influences rankings. If something sucks, we'll say so.

Open by Default

Check the network tab. Read the source. We keep data collection to a minimum and document exactly what we do in our privacy policy.

Our Methodology

Source tiers, grade scale, scoring signals, and our editorial commitments.

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The Fine Print

How We Make Money

Affiliate Links

Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you sign up for a VPN, email provider, or password manager through one of our links, we may earn a commission. This is how we pay for hosting and keep everything free.

Paid Reviews

Companies can pay us to review their product. What they get is coverage, not a good score. We use the same criteria and scoring as every other review. If a paid review results in a bad grade, we publish the bad grade. The company is told this upfront. Any paid review is clearly labelled so you always know.

Advertising

We may introduce privacy-respecting ads in the future through ethical ad networks that do not track users or use personal data for targeting. If we do, ads will be clearly marked, non-intrusive, and will never influence our editorial content or scores.

Who We Are

The Threat Model is an independent review website operated by r3tr0s0ft, registered in the United Kingdom. Infrastructure hosted in France.

Contact us →

What we promise

Neither affiliate commissions nor paid reviews influence our scores, rankings, or recommendations. Products are rated on privacy, security, and features. If a product with a great affiliate program has terrible privacy practices, it gets a terrible score. That's non-negotiable.

If you want to support us without spending money, just share a guide or tool with someone who'd find it useful. That's worth more to us than any commission.

Start somewhere.

You don't need to do everything at once. Pick one tool, read one guide, change one setting.