Whitehat = ethical means of doing things online, nothing shady or illegal Blackhat = unethical bullshit that can get you penalized by a given authority if caught
Alright i get it now white is good and black is bad...pretty simple And im taking it that Grey hat is sort of in the middle right?
Depends - In seo world it would be say you want to get high ranking for a given keyword you will use some blackhat method and get that ranking. Good ones are mainly Kloaking. Blackhat in different Areas mean different thing, for me blackhat means coming up with ideas "inside the box" bcoz everyone is looking outside the box.
You have the White path, where you respect laws, policies, agreements and everything eles. Things will not come to you easily. But once you get it, its yours. And you have the Black path, where you'll do whatever it takes to reach your goals. In fact, you probably will, if you know what youre doing. But there's always the risk
A malicious hacker who exploits - or publicises - a security weakness before informing the affected organisation. or
You have no idea what you are talking about. You have no idea what you are talking about. This is the best answer so far. This is absolute rubbish. Google slaps white, grey, blue and black hats indiscriminately. A blackhat is someone who is tired of living by Google's rules, and then getting a slap for no fair reason. But he understands it is an occupational hazard. WH's come running to DP in the Adsense and Google sections posting silliness like, Blackhats do not adhere to Google's TOS. It is not illegal, not to adhere to Google's TOS. Blackhats are the cutting edge of innovative SEO, they are the ones that push the SEs to constantly update and upgrade. Most of Google's quality comes from their constantly shutting down BH methods and tactics to improve the SERP results. BHs are the ones who expose weaknesses in the algorithm. You can always tell when people who don't know jack about BH comment on it, when they say it is illegal. BH isn't illegal, it is creative, it is innovative, it uses automation, and it is secretive. The difference between a WH and a BH is that the WH also tries to game the SERPs by doing on and off site SEO, but thinks he is pure and honest because he does it through commonly known methods, and usually by hand (manually). A blackhat uses techniques 99% of SEOs don't know about, and they automate using their own custom bots and scrapers. There endeth the lesson.
All these answers seem SEO related but the term originated in the security industry where black hats are "crackers" and white hats are crackers with the intent of finding security holes and reporting them. Both use the same tools and techniques but the black hats intention is to cause harm while the white hat is trying to be helpful.
Unethical ways to do something, or you may call it as breaking the rules & violating terms & conditions secretly.