TopRanked.io Weekly Affiliate Digest: What’s Hot in Affiliate Marketing [Online Privacy Affiliate Programs]

Hey there affiliates.

Remember the days when people who hyperventillated about online privacy seemed a little bit… crazy?

Well guess what!?

It’s about to become so mainstream that the only people who won’t be into it are hipsters…

And that means there’s a HUGE affiliate opportunity brewing.

All you need is some idea of where that opportunity’s coming from (see the news), and how to monetize it (see what follows directly below).

TopRanked.io Affiliate Programs of the Week — Online Privacy Affiliate Programs Edition

Between the week we’ve had and the ‘era’ we’re heading in to (see news section), there’s a pretty good chance that online privacy is about to become a whole lot more important to a whole bunch of people.

And that’s good news for us affiliates.

It means a whole bunch of people are about to be primed to buy a range of solutions.

Here’s a quick grab bag of online privacy solutions to help you get an idea of what’s out there.

Online Privacy Affiliate Program #1 — NordVPN Affiliate Program

Yeah, I know you already know this program pretty well by now. But what good would an “online privacy” edition be without at least one good VPN entry.

And let’s face it, NordVPN’s one of the best out there.

Both in terms of product/brand recognition/all the other stuff consumers care about, and in terms of what affiliates care about — conversions and commissions.

So let’s start with the first of those — conversions.

With a brand name like NordVPN, you’re not going to have too much trouble convincing people they can actually trust the brand. And that’s great news for conversions, because now the only thing you need to do it convince them that they actually need a VPN… and that bit will be easy once you see the news section.

As for commissions, NordVPN’s just about the best out there. Here’s how that looks.

• 100% of the sale for the first month of a monthly plan, then 30% ongoing for life.
• 40% of the sale for the first 6/12/24 months of each of these plans, then 30% for life.

Now, I know you PureVPN affiliates are probably thinking “but I can get this with PureVPN”.

And you’re right.

But here’s the catch — x percentage of a cheaper product == less $$$ for you.

That’s about the only thing that nudged NordVPN ahead for us.

Learn more in our detailed NordVPN Affiliate Program review.

NordVpn Affiliate Program | Earn Up to 100% Per Sale

Online Privacy Affiliate Program #1 — IDShield Affiliate Program

We can’t talk about privacy online without talking about identity theft (and this is going to be a HUGE one if our affiliate opportunity in the news section is even 10% correct).

Here, you’re gonna wanna partner with someone like IDShield.

Why?

Because they basically cover the lot — credit monitoring, fraud alerts, social media surveillance, dark web monitoring, and assistance during identity theft incidents… you get the point.

People love it when you point them to a simple “one and done” solution rather than telling them they need yet more subscription sprawl. And IDShield does this perfectly.

Plus, they pay pretty decent commissions.

Actually, they pay really good commissions — 35% on each and every sale.

And at ~$15/month, that means you could earn about $63/k per year just by convincing about 1000 people to drop that $15 on a monthly basis.

At web scale (especially with the mass panic that’s probably gonna keep breaking out), finding those people is totally possible.

Learn more with our comprehensive IDShield Affiliate Program Review.

IDShield Affiliate Program | Earn Up to 35% Per Sale

Online Privacy Affiliate Program #1 — LastPass Affiliate Program

Our affiliate opportunity this week totally involves people getting their data stolen/hacked/leaked/whatever-you-want-to-call-it online.

And that means, to complete your “online privacy protection” toolkit you’re going to offer these people, you’re absolutely going to need to offer them a good password manager so they don’t make the mistake of reusing the same password everywhere.

Here, LastPass is pretty hard to beat.

First, it’s more or less the OG in this space so has HUGE recognition as a trustworthy provider here, which is exactly what people want when it comes to things like handing over the keys to their social media accounts.

Second (and this is the more important bit), the commissions are pretty solid.

How solid?

25% across the board, regardless of plan.

Now, granted, their plans start at just a few bucks a month (and don’t really go that much higher unless you start selling ‘business’ plans). But that could also be a positive — a few bucks a month is a pretty easy proposition to sell, which will probably just mean you’ll end up selling more of them.

And as we all know, more sales == more commissions.

Wanna know more? Head here to read the best LastPass Affiliate Program Review.

LastPass Affiliate Program | Earn 25% Commissions

Affiliate News Takeaways

Today, I was scrolling through TechCrunch.

A pattern emerged.

Discord — hacked.

Oracle — hacked.

North Korea — hacking.

Oracle — hacked again.

Data breaches. Stolen crypto. So much 1337 h4x0rZ pwning.

And so I asked myself — Is this just a coincidence, or have a bunch of breaches just taken place?

So I searched so more, and guess what I found!?— A whole lotta data breaches.

Here, check this out.

Oct 3 — Salesforce customer databases [link]

A group of hackers calling themselves “Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters”/ShinyHunters just launched a shiny new leak site this week. Their claim — they’ve got about a billion records stolen from companies that host their customer data with Salesforce. And you know what!? A bunch of companies have actually confirmed that their data was stolen. Those companies include Allianz Life, Google, Kering, Qantas, Stellantis, TransUnion, and Workday. Now Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters/ShinyHunters are demanding big dollars or else… they’re gonna leak all the data (what else?).

Oct 3 (again) — Methodist Homes of Alabama & Northwest Florida [link]

On October 3, lawyers for Methodist Homes of Alabama & Northwest Florida wrote to the New Hampshire AG. Their reason? — to notify his “office of a data privacy incident”. Translation — Methodist Homes got hacked. PII/PHI stolen (name, SSN, driver’s license number, medical details). What’s kinda scary is it was almost exactly one year ago (October 14, 2024) that “Methodist Homes became aware of a disruption to its computer network that ultimately led to the discovery of a ransomware attack.” And it wasn’t until September this year, “after a lengthy data mining process”, that “Methodist Homes confirmed

that certain files within that data set contained personal information of certain of its

employees, residents, and patients.”

Oct 7 — Red Hat [link]

Red Hat (a software company) recently wrote “to provide an update regarding a security incident”. The group behind that “incident”, Crimson Collective reckon they downloaded about ~570GB of data, some of which contains customer data — you know, “sensitive client details” and the likes. And here’s the best bit — amongst those details were things like “infrastructure information (network architecture, system configuration, etc), authentication and access data (credentials, access tokens, and more)”. More hacks incoming, maybe?

Oct 7 (again) — AppFolio [link[

This week, AppFolio’s lawyers decided to do a little blogging. What’d they write about? That’s right — it’s about how one of their clients (AppFolio) got hacked… err, I mean, had a “security incident”. The data stolen included names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers… you know, the usual stuff.

Oct 9 — Care N’ Care Health [link]

Remember AppFolio’s lawyers? (See above.) Turns out they’ve had a busy week — another one of their clients, Care N’ Care, also suffered a “breach impacting an undetermined number of individuals and their personal information”. Again, the data includes all the usual stuff — names, SSNs, addresses, medical information, health insurance information, dates of birth… you get the point.

Oct 9 (again) — Rectangle Health [link]

Oh, look. Another lawyer’s blog about another hack/”security incident”. This time, the breach “may have involved sensitive personal identifiable information belonging to over 2,000 individuals.” This pattern’s getting a bit tired by now, so let’s move on to the next one.

Oct 9 (again) — Discord (well… ‘their third-party vendor for online age verification’) [link]

Here’s one of the bigger ones this week — about 70k Discord users had their government ID photos lifted from Discord’s third-party online age verification vendor, along with their “names, email addresses and other contact details, IP addresses and messages with Discord’s customer service.” That last bit was a quote from the Guardian article about it. Why they’re including “names” in the data that “may also have been stolen” beats me — I always thought government IDs included a name by default.

Oct 9 (again) — Oracle E-Business Suite (lots of big companies involved) [link]

Last, but definitely not least, there’s the oracle hack. This time, the “CLOP” group is to blame, and they’ve apparently made off with the data of over 100 companies, which includes “mass amounts of customer data”. Of course, “Oracle did not immediately return an email seeking comment”, so that’s about all we know for now…

That’s a lotta breaches in just one week.

And, if you’re anything like me, maybe you’re smelling an affiliate opportunity here.

If you don’t, let me give you a hint by way of a meme.

Still don’t see what I see?

Alright, let me give it you ya straight.

Nobody thinks about cybersecurity… until they get hacked.

But once they do get hacked, that’s when they (well, at least some of them) suddenly go all in.

Tin foil hats and all.

And that right there is your opportunity to sell something to them.

All you gotta do it find a way to target them (there are many, from the generic to the highly-specific), and make sure you get some highly-relevant, carefully-curated (i.e., affiliate) links in front of them.

But before you go racing to deploy your next campaign, hold on a second. I think we can niche down even more.

There’s a nother big news story that’s going on at the moment which is 100% related.

In fact, it was the root cause of Discord’s breach this week.

I’m talking about online age verification, of course.

And this is gonna be a big one… especially now the whole Gary’s Mod workaround is dead/dying.

Now, in case you weren’t already aware, there’s been a massive push for online age verification on online platforms in recent times.

And this isn’t just some ‘isolated’ thing going on in a small handful of places.

This is a major push by multiple countries/states to force internet users living in their jurisdictions to prove they’re ‘mature’ enough to use the internet.

Here, let me give you a quick overview of what’s going on.

UK — The UK reckons that “the way children experience the internet has fundamentally changed” (lol, no it hasn’t — it was just as depraved when I was a kid). But whatever, facts don’t care about your feelings, and the UK doesn’t care about facts. That’s why they’re requiring online age verification for any site that hosts “pornographic”, “self-harm”, “suicide”, or “eating disorder” content. In other words, they’ve basically created a catch-all to force basically half of the internet to use “facial scans, photo ID and credit cards checks to verify the age of their users.”

France — France used to be all about “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”. But recently, they’ve decided to stamp out some of the Liberté, and with it, a whole bunch of “Fraternité”… And yes, that frat bit was totally a reference to porn. And yes, France stamping out a whole bunch of “Liberté” means they’re now requiring online age verification for anyone wanting to access it.

The EU in general — It’s not here yet, but EU-wide online age verification is on its way. “The Commission” semi-recently published a bunch of minors protection guidelines, along with a prototype age-verification app that’s supposed to be a ‘reusable way for EU users to prove their age when accessing “online content, such as pornography, gambling, purchasing alcohol, and others.” What exactly they mean by “others” is still unknown… but likely just means “and everything else”.

Germany — Germany’s one of the OGs in the whole online age verification game. But you know how once you’ve had a taste of a good thing, you just want more? Yeah, Germany’s no exception, and they keep ramping up their efforts here. The worst bit here — just like the EU and its “others” category, Germany has an “Obviously harmful to minors” category. Basically, that’s anything the state deems to be “endangering minors”, which is a category so broad and vague they might as well just call it “everything else besides Sesamstraße”. (And yes, Germany really does make a Sesame Street knock-off.)

Spain — Spain has probably one of the most drastic online age verification pushes right now. They want device-level age verification. They call it a “pioneering regulation in Europe to try to solve the social problem of indiscriminate access by minors to social media and other digital environments.” You’re free to call it whatever you want.

Australia — So you thought it was just the EU going all nanny state on you? Think again. Australia’s getting in on the action, too. Long story short — under-16s are now banned from social media. Full stop. But there is one bit of good news here. Apparently, 4Chan won’t be included on the list of banned sites. Go figure.

Canada — In a bill titled “An Act to enact the Online Harms Act”, Canada is joining in the fun and creating “a variety of measures to address a range of harmful content online.” Among the targets is “content that incites violent extremism or terrorism”. If you don’t think that’s problematic, just look at how each side of the Red/Blue divide in America has painted Jan 6/BLM/etc. movements. Basically, if your government doesn’t like what you stand for, then they’ll probably soon be able to restrict your ability to believe in it online.

United States — Oh, hello there all you “freedom” loving individuals. I know you love to make fun of how draconian the EU is, but your country’s not far behind. To date, about half the states in your free country have passed age verification laws. And here’s the best part — if any of you were thinking the Supreme Court might overturn such laws due to “freedom of speech”, well, too bad. In case you missed it, a couple of months ago, your Supreme Court ruled that “the power to require age verification is within a State’s authority.” Let’s go US of A.

Now, why am I telling you about all of these online age verification laws?

Well, think back to the Discord hack… it wasn’t actually Discord itself that got hacked.

The “Discord hack” was actually their third-party age verification vendor.

Do you smell the opportunity incoming?

Takeaway

After the week we’ve just had, it’s pretty clear that online platforms and “security incidents” isn’t a problem that’s going away any time soon.

And, at the same time, we’re in a period where age verification requirements are becoming a big thing.

Put the two together, and what you’ve got is a recipe for some of the biggest, baddest data breaches we’ve seen in a long time.

And somehow, I suspect people having their faces/government-issued IDs/etc. stolen — particularly when it’s linked to a record of all the sites they’ve verified their age for — is going to make more than a small handful of people look for “alternative” measures they can take to protect themselves.

That smells like one giant affiliate opportunity if ever there was one… if only there were a whole bunch of security-/privacy-related affiliate programs that could help people trying to dodge/safeguard themselves from online age verification.

Oh wait, there is.

NordVpn Affiliate Program | Earn Up to 100% Per Sale

Closing Thought

Online age verification.

At the end of the day, it’s just more rules.

Exactly the same thing you face when the affiliate programs you work with tell you what you can and can’t do.

The same thing as when ‘thought leaders’ tell you how you ‘should’ be marketing.

The same as when you interact with just about anyone, or do anything.

Sometimes, they really are for our own good.

But a lot of the times, they simply restrict us. (“It’s for the kids…”)

Lucky for us, Pablo Picasso had a few words to say on this.

Nice, right?

Basically he’s saying, once you understand a system, you’re in a much better position to break it/use it/bend it to your will.

Or, if you’re feeling really charitable, you can understand a system, then help other people break it/use it/bend it to their will.

Kinda like online age verification.

Understand how it works, and you know how to get around it.

Now go be charitable and help people understand it to — and make sure you drop them affiliate links to some nice online privacy affiliate programs.

Here’s just one example of what you could use.

NordVpn Affiliate Program | Earn Up to 100% Per Sale

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(Featured image by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS via Pexels)

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