Blackhat is not illegal

onlyme said:

At this point, wouldnt we assume its all hearsay? I mean ive heard everything to the FTC replying to ads in all sections, but yet we have heard nothing. Is it possible people are overreacting? As of right now, we all really have no idea wtf is going on, since people are staying too damn quiet

Click to expand...

Yeah man, I agree 100%. I can't see how there would be anything to gain from staying quiet about what's going on.

the govt and corporate america is notorious for making examples of individuals

especially individuals who have profited the most from scamming and defrauding people.

the dangerous thing about the FTC is they are becoming increasingly more powerful, and have the authority to can shut you down, freeze your assets, and throw you in jail.

Add to that the Fed's powers thanks to the patriot act. You probably thought that you were safe and that the patriot act was just to catch the bad guys...but the patriot act broadened the Fed's powers to invade your privacy....including the ability to collect information about you from your isp and your affiliate company, and give immunity for the aff/cpa companies that voluntarily turn over your information to them. (don't think your aff company won't hesitate to turn you over)

the powers given to the feds as a result of the patriot act allows the govt to invade your privacy even if you have nothing to do with terrorism.

not turning this to a political talk, but it's the truth and pertains to this discussion.

and like I said before, nothing gives the feds more pleasure than to prosecute "bad guy scammers" to the fullest extent of the law to make the general public "feel safe and happy'. These things are good for poll numbers

if you think 100k a month is worth risking your freedom, reputation, and income...then so be it.

if you don't like it, then you can either find ways to legitimize your ewhoring methods, keep a couple hundred thousand in the bank for your legal expenses, or contact your government representatives. Personally, i don't ewhore...but even I can think of ways to make the method FTC compliant.

But complaining on the board will do little to nothing to make the situation go away. After all, bhw's just a forum about internet marketing...not about internet law.

moneymanzzz said:

i agree.. but taking the fact that nobody has yet to be arrested in years, and the fact that risk of trouble is low, i'll venture to say many people here will take the 100k from e-whoring over 2-3k a month adsense..

Click to expand...

somebody mention just promoting a cam girl what's wrong with that again? If she gives cam shows and you send the client to the girl then problem solved no?

oh, and to add to what i mentioned in my last post...

keep in mind that most coorporate entities have friends in high places. they've probably made enough financial contributions to make the feds their own personal police and bodyguards.

yeh this was going to happen sooner or later. Now that internet marketing is booming and everything is trying to get a piece of the pie the feds are gonna be cracking down on more and more people

Would be interesting to know if this all counts for US citizens only?

No one knows where the problems are coming from, or if there even is a problem. This whole thing could of been preemptive. Maybe an authority messaged blackhatworld and said please take down sections relating to xxx. Maybe one well know member found themselves in a bit of heat and asked for a cleaning of the databases. Chances are we will never know.

It's about control, people. The state and the corps see small independent marketers as problems, because we insist on freedom. We don't think trying to really make money, doing small-time just what the big corps do, using pseudonyms, maintaining privacy and anonymity, and so forth are 'fraud' activities because the state and the corps don't like it, and want to paint it as criminal. Their motto is: If they can't control us, we must be evil.

They really, really don't like the internet giving us guys the de-facto freedom to make money and store much of it without leaving much of a transaction trail. If we aren't following somebody else's rules, and can make our money and deposit it outside their system, without them knowing where it came from and were it went, it drives them crazy. So they're clamping down, beginning with sources of info that give people the resources to exercise that freedom. That's the broader picture of what this is all about. Control, total control.

DFunny said:

It's interesting that they removed the buy/sell PVA sub-forum. Kinda leads me to believe that CL is turning up the heat.

Click to expand...

I highly doubt it. CL can't do anything against BHW, it's a forum. Neither can CL do anything to the networks. It's the marketers who are messing things up.


I think we should also rejoice this day.

E-whorers, cookie stuffers, CL marketers, prepare for less competition and more money!

I don't think its the marketers actually...i really honestly think we would have crossed this bridge regardless of what, the advertisers are scammers i mean jesus just google "acai berry scam" when u have a product that's bad, its already a fire started blackhatting it just pours gasoline on the fire, but at the end of the day..there's still a fire.

IMO, a few people with be plucked at random and made examples of, much like the music industry has done. I mean do you really think this woman deserved to be fined $1.9 mil? or this guy fined $675k for downloading music? No, and there have been few such cases since..

I hear ya. I should have been more clear. I was referring to CPA gateways and other types of Iframes really. Maybe "tricking" wasn't the right word either. Maybe "convincing" would have been more suited.

Basically I meant giving someone the option of doing something (an action of some kind) to get what they want (product/service/entertainment) out of the deal...or leaving your page.

So I guess I meant incentivizing (if thats even a word) really.

Grandslam said:

Tricking anyone into doing anything is fraud in my book.

Keep in mind guys that the subtitle of Black Hat World is black hat SEO forum, not black hat fraud forum. The difference between those 2 categories is night and day. Its all the cyber punks that haven't even had their voice crack yet that have been mixing up the two. After all, being a minor, they can do what ever they want and get nothing worse than probation.

I'm sure some of you know the story of Amish Shah. He got a visit from the Feds when he was 16 for black hat methods he had been using. All charges were dropped since he was an A student and had no previous offenses. If he would've been convicted, his jail time would've totalled 80 years if I remember correct. Ever since that ordeal, he has changed his ways for the better. Now look where he is - a multi millionaire from white hat marketing.

TBH, I've been wondering for a while who set up an actual ewhore section, considering this type of thing could land you in jail. Same goes for some of these CL methods, HOWEVER, the CL section as a whole was not made for these type of methods.

Click to expand...

i see this as a good thing . i love the new changes ,.. today was one of my best days so far . :biggthump

gbmack said:

I highly doubt it. CL can't do anything against BHW, it's a forum. Neither can CL do anything to the networks. It's the marketers who are messing things up.


I think we should also rejoice this day.

E-whorers, cookie stuffers, CL marketers, prepare for less competition and more money!

Click to expand...

While I agree with you that CL cannot directly go after bhw, they can make it a pain in the ass to host any content discussing fraud on CL. Yeh BHW can ignore their threats or whatever but what about bhw's hosting company? and if you're solution is to change hosting well that's not a solution since CL will go after the new hosting. Hosting providers don't want problems. It really comes down to who's willing to spend the most and fight the longest. And lets face it. The pros on bhw don't need the sections that were removed. The pros on bhw are the ones who thought up most of the info in those sections and created the most valuable threads in them. The pros will always adapt and keep making money. This hurts newbies and slows down overall innovation. if bhw does NOT bring back those sections then smaller more private blackhat forums will popup all over the web. Its the same thing that happened when the record companies went after the big torrent trackers, when they shut one down 10 smallers ones pop up.

don't forget what happened w/a certain cs stuffer service late last year

from what i remember, feds confiscated the owners servers...all the names on the databases collected and given to the friendly folks at egay, who intern banned all names on the databases.

like i said, these companies have friends in high places. for those of you making 10k a day w/ewhoring/csing/or any other activity that is now considered fraud by the ftc..... and want to continue the practice..... my suggestion to you is to find a nice senator/congressman, become 'friends, and start contributing handsomely to their re election campaign.

Indeed, just to add to the two above posts, what happens when the FTC/Big Kahuna Inc and who knows who else starts to attack the rest of the BH bag of tricks? It's already bad enough that this site has for now nixed the CS and EW forums, has gone gun shy on CL, and continues to tell anybody interested in a basic BH method like PPI to go to a different forum altogether. Will all the major techniques henceforth go underground, or splinter into a dozen different websites that are willing to talk about them?

So, this is how we stand our ground, this is how we define things? Somebody with guns behinds them, or a reporter's badge in front of them calls technique X 'fraud' and, one zillion BHW posts later, we suddenly realize 'oh yeah, that method involves fraud?' What happens when the government/media drops the NEXT shoe, and calls the other BH methods 'fraud?' What if they next go after autobloggers for 'misrepresenting' they are providing original content on their site? Or linkwheelers, for manufacturing a 'fraudulent' high rank position for a site through creative linkchain systems?

And what about CPA marketers who use hide/blank the referrer scripts, for 'misrepresenting' where their traffic is coming from? Or anybody who creates professional looking websites, for 'misrepresenting' that they're big time marketers? Or anybody who creates multiple accounts anywhere, for 'misrepresenting' they are multiple individuals? Don't be surprised if this is where things are headed. When TPTB start defining black hat in general as a fraudulent enterprise, will we roll over and just accept that, too?

well, i understand they got to do what they got to do. but this sucks. does anyone know where we can discuss cs'ing now?

angelas111 said:

well, i understand they got to do what they got to do. but this sucks. does anyone know where we can discuss cs'ing now?

Click to expand...

The mods, who seem to have inside information, have personally given everyone on this forum a fair warning about CS, Ewhoring and fraudulent CL activities and you still want to pursue it?? Thats just asking for it.

lol...what a joke

angelas111 said:

well, i understand they got to do what they got to do. but this sucks. does anyone know where we can discuss cs'ing now?

Click to expand...

There's blogs & websites devoted to that stuff.