is blackhat marketing illegal?

[cashout453]

Just want to know if it is or not? Mainly blackhat affiliate marketing. Thx.

 

[drogon]

Depends on what exactly you are doing....

 

[youtalkmedia]

not illegal...

Black hat is basically trying to massively increase efforts by using bots and programs to do our work.

(or at least how I understand it.)

 

[GiorgioB]

Blackhat marketing is only breaking the rules of Google.. as far as I know Google is not the law. so no, its not illegal.

 

[Sam Wylde]

It really depends on what your doing.

 

[mickyfu]

Yes quick leave while you can, I will not tell anyone you have been here, if you do not tell the internet police I have been blasting my sites again.

 

[evilclown]

blackhat? illegal? whuat? ponies? flying ponies? whuat?

 

[GiorgioB]

Depends on what exactly you are doing....

It really depends on what your doing.

^^ really? is it really necessary to repeat the post just above yours just to get your post count up?

Also, how does it depend on what you are doing? Please explain, I am curious. Of course if you are promoting a scam/kiddy porn/etc.. website via BH ways, then it is the scam/kiddy porn/etc.. website that is illegal, surely not the black hat methods.

 

[Panther28]

YES, and now that you have typed it in, you can expect a knock at the door from the MIB!!

 

[philionaire]

In a word: No

Blackhat marketing = bending the rules in your favor - not breaking the rules - like pretending to be more than one person/have more than one account, possibly breaking the TOS of the sites you use to do it, but generally not illegal depending what country you live in - tread very carefully with classified sites/social sites as they have been known to go after people for breaking their TOS in some cases - even in other countries if their reach is that good.

Illegal - like fraud - where stolen credit cards get used to fill out CPA offers or buying items through your aff links so you get the commission are used, or making up claims on health sites that cant be backed up.

 

[WizGizmo]

Often people confuse Black Hat Marketing with Black Hat Hacking.
They are two entirely different things. In fact, we do not even allow
hacking discussion on Black Hat World.

For the most part, Black Hat Internet Marketing is simply a more
aggressive approach to internet marketing. BH is actually more
about clever ways of bending the rules in such a way as to gain
advantages that ultimately yield greater profits.

Nothing more - nothing less . . .

Cheers! - "Wiz"

 

[cashout453]

Thx for all the replies everyone.

In a word: No

Blackhat marketing = bending the rules in your favor - not breaking the rules - like pretending to be more than one person/have more than one account, possibly breaking the TOS of the sites you use to do it, but generally not illegal depending what country you live in - tread very carefully with classified sites/social sites as they have been known to go after people for breaking their TOS in some cases - even in other countries if their reach is that good.

Illegal - like fraud - where stolen credit cards get used to fill out CPA offers or buying items through your aff links so you get the commission are used, or making up claims on health sites that cant be backed up.

I see, well I want to tread on classifieds, so you are saying that this could get me in trouble or is illegal? What has happened to these people that they have went after? I live in Canada, the laws shouldn't be too far off from the states Im guessing. So would what I want to do be considered illegal infact?

Often people confuse Black Hat Marketing with Black Hat Hacking.
They are two entirely different things. In fact, we do not even allow
hacking discussion on Black Hat World.

For the most part, Black Hat Internet Marketing is simply a more
aggressive approach to internet marketing. BH is actually more
about clever ways of bending the rules in such a way as to gain
advantages that ultimately yield greater profits.

Nothing more - nothing less . . .

Cheers! - "Wiz"

So then spamming the hell out of sites that im interested in, is not illegal? Is that a fact?

 

[GiorgioB]

There is one thing that is illegal, and that is spamming email addresses that haven't opted in. However, I'm not sure what the risks are and how that works.

 

[phpbuilt]

Thx for all the replies everyone.

I see, well I want to tread on classifieds, so you are saying that this could get me in trouble or is illegal? What has happened to these people that they have went after? I live in Canada, the laws shouldn't be too far off from the states Im guessing. So would what I want to do be considered illegal infact?

There are many a multimillion dollar corporation that got rich scraping craigslist, in fact airbnb is worth 2 billion last I read. No, the owner isn't going to jail anytime soon.

So then spamming the hell out of sites that im interested in, is not illegal? Is that a fact?

Someone puts a method to post on their website, why can't you use it? Even if it were in their terms of service that you can only post once per day, violating a website's TOS is not criminal. At best they could sue you civil ... andhey would have to show actual damages in order to recoup anything, which at most would be spending 5 minutes clicking delete on your spam. And most of the sites you spam to don't have a TOS, let alone saying you can post several times. So no, its not illegal.

 

[Jeevs]

In simple words....Black Hat marketing is just the automation of White Hat marketing.

 

[cashout453]

There are many a multimillion dollar corporation that got rich scraping craigslist, in fact airbnb is worth 2 billion last I read. No, the owner isn't going to jail anytime soon.



Someone puts a method to post on their website, why can't you use it? Even if it were in their terms of service that you can only post once per day, violating a website's TOS is not criminal. At best they could sue you civil ... andhey would have to show actual damages in order to recoup anything, which at most would be spending 5 minutes clicking delete on your spam. And most of the sites you spam to don't have a TOS, let alone saying you can post several times. So no, its not illegal.

Is this a fact? And cl does have a tos. And one of their tos is no affilate marketing. So according to you, if I went on a site like cl and spammed, it wouldn't be considered illegal? How do you know this to be true? Can anyone confirm this 100%? I live in canada btw.

 

[GiorgioB]

Is this a fact? And cl does have a tos. And one of their tos is no affilate marketing. So according to you, if I went on a site like cl and spammed, it wouldn't be considered illegal? How do you know this to be true? Can anyone confirm this 100%? I live in canada btw.

dude, breaking CL's TOS isn't illegal.. you won't go to jail. You'll probably just get banned from CL.

 

[thehighmind]

All these guys are crazy and liers. Blackhat is illegal!! If they catch you using blackhat methods they will kill you, and if you survive they will kill you again and again. I don't use it, but if you, do keep a loaded gun in case they'll come for you. Get rid of your family because you don't want to them to be there when the war will begin. Find a cave where you can catch some WiFi and move there, it's safer. Pay a dude to bring you food once in a while and train him so he can't be follow. If possible pay another dude every week. Use proxy or other shits so you can't be traced online. Digg a hole in front of your cave and put there some beasts, like bears, alligators and other crazy stuff to keep you safe. Be safe man.... be safe!

 

[phpbuilt]

Is this a fact? And cl does have a tos. And one of their tos is no affilate marketing. So according to you, if I went on a site like cl and spammed, it wouldn't be considered illegal? How do you know this to be true? Can anyone confirm this 100%? I live in canada btw.

Here's how you confirm it yourself.

Go make a website. Put a form post on it for comments. Make a clear TOS on it saying that you can only post once a day. Wait for someone to post twice. Take their IP address, hunt down the original poster (call a psychic if you need help locating them) and perform a citizens arrest on them for violating your terms of service. Either that or wave down a police officer and ask them to do it.

When they're behind bars, take a pic and upload it here. I'll admit I was wrong.

 

[bullseye123]

Well it definitely is not illegal, but these day's doing heavy black-hat methods gets your website banned from google very fast.
So if your traffic is not coming from search engines, and your not planning to make money with Adsense then you can definitely try it.

There is however some blackhat methods that is used in a white hat type of way. Take backlinking for instance, most of the providers use
automatic way's of getting you the backlinks faster then what you will be able to do on your own manually this is black hat, but they do it in such
a way that google thinks it is normal and there is spinned ( blackhat) original ( whitehat) content on high PageRank websites with low OBL to your
website. So in this way loads of us are using blackhat way's.

To just answer your question straight, Blackhat is not illegal, it is more of a risk in getting all your hard work de-ranked and blocked or punished loosing
all your hardwork and money spend on a project if taken too far.