Affiliate Disclosure

Effective date: 16 October 2026

This page explains where the money comes from. It is written out in full because a disclosure that only appears as small print beside a link is not really a disclosure.

The arrangement, in one paragraph

K.R.N. rest s.r.o., the publisher of Idle Cipher, takes part in an affiliate programme for Crossout, the free-to-play game used as the running example in this course. Links to that game on this site are affiliate links. If you follow one, create an account and confirm your email address, the affiliate network that operates the link pays the publisher a commission for that sign-up. That payment is the only revenue this site receives.

What it costs you: nothing extra

The commission is paid by the advertiser through the network, out of its own marketing budget. You are not charged for it, there is no surcharge on anything you later buy, and the game costs you exactly what it would cost had you typed its address into your browser yourself. The vendor describes the game as free to play, and following a link from here does not change that.

Nor does it commit you to anything. Opening a vendor's site to read its system requirements, which is what Step 2 actually asks you to do, is not a sign-up and earns this site nothing.

Where the links appear

There are three of them on the whole site, and each carries a note beside it saying what it is:

• On the home page, in the section explaining where Crossout appears in the course.
• In Step 2, where the course sends you to check a vendor's stated platforms and system requirements against your own machine.
• In Step 3, where the course describes what a registration and an email confirmation involve.

Every one of them opens in a new tab, is marked up as a sponsored link so that search engines are told what it is, and points straight at the destination. There is no redirect page, no counter and no script that changes where a link goes after you look at it: the address you see in your browser's status bar is the address you will arrive at. Nothing else on this site is paid — the links to Australian government bodies, in particular, are ordinary links and nobody pays for them.

What the commission does not decide

It does not decide what the steps say. It does not decide which checklist items appear, and it has not caused an item to be removed because it might lead a reader to decide against signing up — several of them point exactly that way, starting with the instruction in Checklist 1 to stop if your operating system is not on the vendor's list.

It does not buy a recommendation. The course does not say Crossout is good, better than alternatives, safe or suitable for you, and it states no fact about the product beyond what the vendor itself has published. Where a detail is not in that source, the course says the vendor does not state it rather than guessing.

It does not change the conclusion a reader should reach. Someone who finishes all five steps and decides not to install anything has used this course exactly as intended, and that outcome is written into the steps themselves.

What does decide the content

Three things. The order in which a newcomer meets real decisions, which sets the sequence of the five steps. The published material of the Australian bodies the course relies on — the Australian Classification Board, the eSafety Commissioner, the ACCC, the OAIC, Scamwatch and the Australian Cyber Security Centre — which sets what the course says about rights, safety and classification. And the vendor's own published description, which is the only source for product facts.

The commercial relationship does explain one thing honestly: why this product is the example rather than another product in the same category. The full editorial method, including that admission, is set out on the About page.

Why disclose it this plainly

Because a reader deciding whether to trust a page is entitled to know who is paying for it, and because in Australia misleading or deceptive conduct in trade or commerce is prohibited under the Australian Consumer Law, which the ACCC administers. Presenting paid placement as independent editorial would be exactly that kind of conduct. The straightforward alternative is to say so on every page where a link appears, and to keep this page available from the footer of every page.

Trademark notice

All brand names on Idle Cipher, Crossout among them, are the property of their owners. Except for the paid affiliate links described on our funding page, none of those owners is affiliated with Idle Cipher, and none has endorsed or sponsored it.

Questions

If anything on this page is unclear, write to info@idlecipher.online and ask. K.R.N. rest s.r.o., č.ev. 609, 664 49 Ostopovice, Czech Republic, company registration 04490142.