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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 o
by 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 agoOne 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 agoNo, 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.