From time to time you’ll find on WIRED a link to buy a product from Amazon.com. If you choose to click—and don’t worry, we’ll flag these—the URL will contain a small code that’s unique to links from our website. This is an affiliate code, and it sends our company a small percentage of the money you spend. This does not mean we are indebted to Amazon, nor does it mean we’re favoring some products or companies over others. Let us be very clear: WIRED is committed to covering Amazon and other companies objectively.

WIRED’s editorial team has nothing to do with the affiliate program, which functions entirely separate from the editorial process. Our business team brokered the arrangement with Amazon, and our publishing system the appropriate code when it detects an Amazon purchase link. WIRED’s editorial news team has nothing to do with the affiliate program. Our ad sales team brokered the arrangement, which functions independently of our editorial and newsgathering process. Reporters and editors are not asked to write about products available on Amazon, and do not benefit from doing so.

That said, affiliate links are quickly becoming the industry standard in online publishing, and they offer another means of paying for the high-quality journalism you expect from WIRED. However, if you object to this process, we’ll help you opt out. Here’s how to remove an Amazon affiliate code from a WIRED URL:

Right-click the link in question and select “Copy Link”

Paste the link in your browser’s URL field. Then highlight and delete the ?tag=w050b-20 portion.

So this:

Becomes this:

You’re done!