Methodology
Every service gets one number from 0 to 10. This page explains in plain words where it comes from and what it is made of.
What the score is made of
The score answers three separate questions. Each is backed by its own kind of evidence — what the service declares and confirms, what its history shows, and what people say — and these are checked differently, faked differently, and therefore never mixed.
Privacy
Privacy as described by declared and verified properties of the service.
Source: attributes. Changed by a moderator with proof.
Trust
Reliability, track record and security incidents.
Source: attributes and incidents. Changed by a moderator with proof.
Community
The experience of people who used it.
Source: approved reviews, weighted by author karma and age.
Privacy and trust both start at a neutral 50 and move up or down with confirmed attributes — "no registration" adds points, "mandatory KYC" removes them. Only what a moderator confirmed with proof counts: an owner's unverified claim is shown on the card but does not move the score. Every attribute and its exact effect is listed openly on each service's card.
How three numbers become one
The three components are averaged with weights. The weights are an editorial decision: they declare what this catalogue values most — privacy first, then trust, and community opinion last.
A component only carries its full weight when there is enough evidence behind it. A service reviewed by two people gets only a fraction of the community weight — and a service with no reviews at all is not punished: the component simply drops out and the others share its weight. No evidence means no vote, not a bad vote.
Security incidents
A hack, a loss of user funds or an exit scam is entered by a moderator with evidence and temporarily lowers the trust score. The penalty fades linearly from the day the incident happened: a service that recovered after a breach regains its trust naturally. Behaviour that was never fixed is a different matter — it gets a permanent attribute, not a fading penalty.
When the rating is not shown
There are no secret thresholds that hide it. There are exactly two cases, and in both a dash is shown rather than a zero — zero would read as "we measured, and it is bad", while what has to be said is "not rated yet" or "removed from ranking". The three components stay visible either way.
- Not a single attribute has been confirmed by a human yet — a score built from machine signals alone would describe nothing.
- The service is marked as a scam and the rating is suppressed.