Editorial Policy

Earth SIMs publishes product reviews, comparisons, and country connectivity guides for travelers and remote workers. The recommendations we make affect the money you spend and, sometimes, your ability to work from abroad. This page sets out the standards we hold ourselves to so you can judge our work fairly.

1. Editorial Independence

Earth SIMs is privately owned and operated by Jordan Stambaugh. No outside entity — including our affiliate partners — has editorial control, pre-publication review rights, or veto power over our content.

• Commissions do not determine rankings. A product that pays a higher commission will never outrank a better-performing product. Rankings reflect our testing, not our revenue.
• We publish negative reviews. If a product underperforms, we say so — including products from partners who pay us commission. Where a partner product fails, we name the failure and recommend alternatives.
• We recommend non-partners. Some of our top picks earn us nothing because we have no affiliate relationship with the vendor. If the best option is a non-partner product, we say so.
• No pay-for-play content. We do not accept payment for reviews, rankings, or "sponsored" placement inside editorial content. Gift or loaner hardware is disclosed in the review and returned or retained at list value — never in exchange for coverage terms.

Our full commercial relationships are listed on our Affiliate Disclosure page.

2. How We Produce Content

Hands-on testing

Reviews on Earth SIMs are based on direct, hands-on use of the product in the countries and conditions where it matters. For eSIM reviews, that means activating the plan on a real device, running speed tests across multiple locations, and tracking behavior over a stated testing window (published in the review). For VPN reviews, that means measuring connection latency, throughput, and feature behavior on multiple networks and operating systems. For travel insurance, we read the policy wording end-to-end, simulate common claim scenarios against the terms, and, where possible, report from policyholders who have filed real claims.

Research-based content

Some content — explainers, technical background, regulatory summaries — is research-based rather than testing-based. This content is clearly labeled and cites primary sources (official documentation, carrier websites, regulator announcements, published standards).

Author attribution

Every article carries a visible byline. The author listed is responsible for the research, testing, and claims in the article. Where an article is substantively reviewed or fact-checked by a second person, that reviewer is also credited.

3. Sourcing and Fact-Checking

When an article makes a specific, verifiable claim — a price, a speed, a regulatory rule, a policy exclusion — we hold ourselves to these rules:

• Prefer primary sources. Prices come from vendor pricing pages. Speeds come from our own measurements or from authoritative indices (Ookla, Opensignal, Cable.co.uk). Policy terms come from the insurer's own policy document, not from marketing copy.
• Cross-reference before publishing. If two sources disagree, we check a third and note the discrepancy in the article.
• Timestamp everything. Every article shows a publish date and, where applicable, a last-updated and last-tested date. Claims about pricing, coverage, or availability carry an explicit "as of" date.
• Link out. We link to the primary source so you can verify any claim that matters to you. Broken citation links are treated as correction-eligible issues.

4. Use of AI Tools

Artificial intelligence is a research and editing tool in our workflow. It does not replace testing, reporting, or judgment.

• AI may assist with: summarizing public documentation, drafting outlines from our own notes, checking grammar and consistency, generating schema markup, and surfacing points we may have missed.
• AI does not: author articles on its own, produce reviews of products it has not been shown our test data for, invent product features, fabricate pricing, or make final editorial judgments.
• All content is reviewed by a human before publication. The byline author is responsible for every factual claim in the piece, regardless of which tools assisted in drafting it.

5. Updates and Revisions

Connectivity, pricing, and carrier coverage change frequently. We treat content maintenance as a first-class editorial obligation.

• High-traffic reviews and country guides are reviewed at least once per quarter.
• Significant product changes — a pricing overhaul, a coverage expansion, a policy change — trigger an out-of-cycle update.
• When a factually significant change is made to an already-published article, we update the "Last updated" date and, where the change materially alters a recommendation, include a note describing what changed.

6. Corrections

When we get something wrong, we fix it promptly and document what changed. Our full process is in our Corrections Policy.

7. Conflicts of Interest

• Authors disclose any personal or financial relationship with a vendor they cover, beyond the standard commercial affiliate relationship between Earth SIMs and the vendor.
• We do not hold material equity positions in companies whose products we review.
• Where we accept loaner hardware, travel comps, or media-access credentials, we disclose this inside the relevant article.

8. User-Generated Content

Earth SIMs does not currently host user-generated content (comments, forums, reviews). When we quote reader feedback — for example, policyholder claim experiences — we obtain permission and, where requested, anonymize the source.

9. Reader Rights

Readers are entitled to:

• Know who wrote an article and when it was last verified.
• See the specific sources a claim rests on, and follow a link to verify it.
• Submit a correction request and receive a response (see the Corrections Policy).
• Understand our commercial relationships with any vendor mentioned (see the Affiliate Disclosure).

10. Contact

Questions about an article, sources, or our editorial process: editorial@earthsims.com.