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The article is supposedly about SEO, but the author spends half of it talking about fraud and implying that that is what blackhat SEO is about? lol Blackhat SE

by getsat 15y ago

The article is supposedly about SEO, but the author spends half of it talking about fraud and implying that that is what blackhat SEO is about? lol Blackhat SEO is using programs like Xrumer and Scrapebox to build backlinks en masse, hiding content from search engine spiders by inspecting user agents, and building low-quality content farms of keyword-laden articles. Phishing and credit card fraud are totally separate.

slouch 15y ago
I agree. Blackhat SEOs don't necessarily break laws, and that sentence gave me pause as well.
TomGullen 15y ago
Xrumer spams peoples websites. As I understand it this is the main strategy employed by blackhates. Email spam is illegal (CAN-SPAM Act). I hope that one day spamming peoples websites is also illegal. So it's not criminal to use Xrumer but in my opinion people who use it are on the same moral footing as common email spammers.
- srl 15y ago
  > I hope that one day spamming peoples websites is also illegal. Today of all days, be careful what you wish for.
- stfu 15y ago
  As far as I know Xrumer creates member profile pages on forums and adds a link to the "promoted" website to the profile. At what point do you see the criminal offense? By creating a profile and posting nothing on the forum? By adding a link where the form gives a legitimate linking-home option? Even so I feel a bit like playing devils advocate here, but Xrumer profile creation seems to me one of the least annoying activities in comparison to blog comments or other "visible" activities. Plus the "illegal" argument is always a double edged sword. Just imagine someone else Xrumer'ing your own website and the consequential explaining you have to do afterwards. As soon as Google (or law...) declares a specific tactic as bann-worthy people will use it against their competitors.
  - puranjay 15y ago
    One of the motivations for this article was coming across a link on a Blackhat forum (yes, I keep bad company) about 'demoting' a competitor's website by creating hundreds of thousands of fake links to it overnight. While this tactic doesn't always work, the article's author was quick to mention that given a relatively young site, it can be extremely helpful in getting rid of the competition. I thought that was a very dickish thing to do. BlackhatSEO might not be illegal, but is ethically and morally wrong, plain and simple. And it makes the internet a crappier place. That's a good enough excuse to go on a BlackHat SEO crusade.
  - TomGullen 15y ago
    No, it's also that program that leaves comments on your blog posts and creates forum threads and replies. Profile creation is only a small facet of it. Honest webmasters like myself have to spend time each day cleaning the junk these programs leave, as well as much of the time of our forum moderators.
- nostromo 15y ago
  Legal solutions don't work online, technical ones do. CAN-SPAM didn't stop spam. Bayesian spam filtering did. Every little annoyance in life shouldn't be subject to federal regulation.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    > Bayesian spam filtering did. Really? Not taking out some big botnets? Not a move away from email and onto social networks? This article suggests that email spam, at a three year low, is still at 70% of all email. (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222447/Symantec_says_spam_levels_fall_to_lowest_in_three_years http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222447/Symantec_says...)
    - chc 15y ago
      It's not that spammers have stopped sending it; it's that, for most people, spam is not 70% of what makes it to their inbox.
    - nostromo 15y ago
      My broader point is that CAN-SPAM did nothing to reduce spam. http://www.cybercrimejournal.com/alexdec2009.htm http://www.cybercrimejournal.com/alexdec2009.htm I believe anti-SEO legislation would be just as ineffective.
      - GigabyteCoin 15y ago
        Most laws have little effect on the outcome of any "lucrative business practice".
  - TomGullen 15y ago
    CAN-SPAM has been very successful in shutting down big bot nets and sending some of the biggest spammers to jail. Also this isn't a little annoyance, it's wasting time and resources for everyone just like email spam is. Daily me and some volunteers on my site spent time cleaning up the junk that these blackhats use.
patio11 15y ago
There is some intersection as of late, largely in the form of "Why hack and deface a WordPress install with your script kiddie tags when you could instead deface several hundred thousand WordPress installs with pharma links, thereby getting tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions. It's like robbing a bank except you won't get shot and the FBI can't bring itself to care that you did it."
- getsat 15y ago
  Yeah, I've seen that, too. A google search for "viagra site:mit.edu" has interesting results. .gov and .edu links are goldmines.
dchuk 15y ago
nah man, the author is actually pretty correct in terms of what constitutes actual blackhat seo. Blackhats hack sites and cloak and clickjack. Link spammers are just a shade of grey. The problem is that link spammers like to sound tougher than they are so they say they do blackhat seo instead of what they're really doing, which is grey. Link spam won't send you to jail. Hacking a site can send you to jail. I've spammed millions of links in the last few years, and I am most definitely not a real blackhat.

by getsat 15y ago

slouch 15y ago

I agree. Blackhat SEOs don't necessarily break laws, and that sentence gave me pause as well.

TomGullen 15y ago

Xrumer spams peoples websites. As I understand it this is the main strategy employed by blackhates. Email spam is illegal (CAN-SPAM Act). I hope that one day spamming peoples websites is also illegal. So it's not criminal to use Xrumer but in my opinion people who use it are on the same moral footing as common email spammers.

srl 15y ago
> I hope that one day spamming peoples websites is also illegal. Today of all days, be careful what you wish for.
stfu 15y ago
As far as I know Xrumer creates member profile pages on forums and adds a link to the "promoted" website to the profile. At what point do you see the criminal offense? By creating a profile and posting nothing on the forum? By adding a link where the form gives a legitimate linking-home option? Even so I feel a bit like playing devils advocate here, but Xrumer profile creation seems to me one of the least annoying activities in comparison to blog comments or other "visible" activities. Plus the "illegal" argument is always a double edged sword. Just imagine someone else Xrumer'ing your own website and the consequential explaining you have to do afterwards. As soon as Google (or law...) declares a specific tactic as bann-worthy people will use it against their competitors.
- puranjay 15y ago
  One of the motivations for this article was coming across a link on a Blackhat forum (yes, I keep bad company) about 'demoting' a competitor's website by creating hundreds of thousands of fake links to it overnight. While this tactic doesn't always work, the article's author was quick to mention that given a relatively young site, it can be extremely helpful in getting rid of the competition. I thought that was a very dickish thing to do. BlackhatSEO might not be illegal, but is ethically and morally wrong, plain and simple. And it makes the internet a crappier place. That's a good enough excuse to go on a BlackHat SEO crusade.
- TomGullen 15y ago
  No, it's also that program that leaves comments on your blog posts and creates forum threads and replies. Profile creation is only a small facet of it. Honest webmasters like myself have to spend time each day cleaning the junk these programs leave, as well as much of the time of our forum moderators.
nostromo 15y ago
Legal solutions don't work online, technical ones do. CAN-SPAM didn't stop spam. Bayesian spam filtering did. Every little annoyance in life shouldn't be subject to federal regulation.
- DanBC 15y ago
  > Bayesian spam filtering did. Really? Not taking out some big botnets? Not a move away from email and onto social networks? This article suggests that email spam, at a three year low, is still at 70% of all email. (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222447/Symantec_says_spam_levels_fall_to_lowest_in_three_years http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222447/Symantec_says...)
  - chc 15y ago
    It's not that spammers have stopped sending it; it's that, for most people, spam is not 70% of what makes it to their inbox.
  - nostromo 15y ago
    My broader point is that CAN-SPAM did nothing to reduce spam. http://www.cybercrimejournal.com/alexdec2009.htm http://www.cybercrimejournal.com/alexdec2009.htm I believe anti-SEO legislation would be just as ineffective.
    - GigabyteCoin 15y ago
      Most laws have little effect on the outcome of any "lucrative business practice".
- TomGullen 15y ago
  CAN-SPAM has been very successful in shutting down big bot nets and sending some of the biggest spammers to jail. Also this isn't a little annoyance, it's wasting time and resources for everyone just like email spam is. Daily me and some volunteers on my site spent time cleaning up the junk that these blackhats use.

patio11 15y ago

There is some intersection as of late, largely in the form of "Why hack and deface a WordPress install with your script kiddie tags when you could instead deface several hundred thousand WordPress installs with pharma links, thereby getting tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions. It's like robbing a bank except you won't get shot and the FBI can't bring itself to care that you did it."

getsat 15y ago
Yeah, I've seen that, too. A google search for "viagra site:mit.edu" has interesting results. .gov and .edu links are goldmines.

dchuk 15y ago

nah man, the author is actually pretty correct in terms of what constitutes actual blackhat seo. Blackhats hack sites and cloak and clickjack. Link spammers are just a shade of grey. The problem is that link spammers like to sound tougher than they are so they say they do blackhat seo instead of what they're really doing, which is grey. Link spam won't send you to jail. Hacking a site can send you to jail. I've spammed millions of links in the last few years, and I am most definitely not a real blackhat.