Source policy
For technical claims we rely on primary sources: specifications and RFCs, protocol and platform documentation, official developer pages. A retelling of someone else's article does not count as a source.
When a fact comes from an external source, we name it. When it is our own observation, we mark it as such, so the reader can tell the two apart.
- Primary: RFCs and specifications, platform documentation, official developer sites, legal documents.
- Acceptable with a caveat: user reports and support requests — as observation, not as measurement.
- Not acceptable: retellings without a primary link, rankings without a method, screenshots without context.
How we verify facts
- Every number in a piece must have an origin: a source, a calculation or a measurement. Numbers without one are removed.
- Claims about the product are checked against how the app behaves, not against how we described it before.
- Claims about other services are based on their official materials. We do not rate their availability unless we tested it.
- If a fact cannot be verified, the wording becomes cautious or the claim is dropped.
How we handle numbers
A separate rule, and the reason some pages look "empty". Availability figures, success rates, check counts and connection times are published only when real measurements stand behind them.
Until then the page shows the status "not enough data" and a dash instead of a figure. Estimates, rounded "approximately" values and numbers borrowed from elsewhere do not go into those fields.
We call our own monitoring by its name — "VolnaLink Research". It is not independent, and we will not present it as such.
What we never publish
- Invented tests, reviews or metrics.
- Judgements that competitors do not work, without actual testing.
- Claims of the "number one service" kind without a method and input data.
- Promises the product does not keep: anonymity, malware protection, guaranteed operation on any network.
- Hundreds of near-identical pages differing by a single word.
When a piece is updated
Articles about things that change — availability, prices, the app line-up — are revisited as those things change. Every piece carries an update date, and it moves only on a substantive edit, not a cosmetic one.
If a piece is too outdated to fix, we rewrite it or merge it into a more current one, leaving a redirect behind.
Corrections
We correct mistakes rather than hide them. If a correction changes the meaning of a piece, a note stays in the text describing what changed. Report an error at support@volnaapp.com or on Telegram.