Being in the affiliate industry for a long period of time now, I have seen different types of blackhatters where most of them use tricky ways to generate traffic or “force†visitors to complete an offer whereas some others tend to pass the boundaries and commit fraud (by completing their own offers via virtual credit cards) What is a blackhatter? In affiliate marketing, a blackhatter is usually someone who uses different sneaky ways to drive traffic to his offers and hence, generating a higher profit. Basically blackhatters break the TOS’s (terms of service) of the affiliate companies by using thousands of ways starting from ewhoring (posting in Craigslist) to scrapping different forum boards and mass emailing (spamming) anyone, and in most of the cases, they purchase paid traffic in order to lower they conversion rate (CTR) so they won’t raise any red alerts to their affiliate managers. BlackHatters vs Affiliate Companies 60 % (if not more) of all commissions generated in an affiliate company are generated in various blackhat ways. At the end of the day, the affiliate companies don’t really care too much whether someone has used blackhat methods or whitehat ones, the affiliate companies start complaining solely when the traffic at the advertisers side is not converting. Even though most affiliate companies strictly prohibit any blackhat methods, they seriously don’t care as long as its converting for the advertisers . . . And the “Shaving†was born For anyone who is not familiar with the word “shaving†in the affiliate marketing industry, its the process where either advertisers or affiliate companies “shave†a percentage of leads in order to balance the equation . . . In fact there have been many cases where advertisers haven’t paid due to “low quality traffic†but at the end of the day, either the affiliate company has paid the publisher from its own pocket (in order not to lose him) or they have clearly stated that the advertiser doesn’t want to pay. In other cases affiliate companies shave and get a nice sum of money and the publisher can’t understand whats happening. Blackhatting considered illegal ? Depends! Many blackhatters really cross the border by even using stolen credit cards to purchase stuff via their affiliate links and that is a criminal offense in many countries whereas others cloak the url’s in order not to reveal where the traffic is coming from (because in most of the cases that type of traffic is not allowed). Affiliate Marketing is a billion dollar industry and everyone with a brain and the capacity to act can generate a steady stream of income, some make $xx,xxx per day, others make cents per day … its all about perception and how good you are at it … at least the best part of affiliate marketing is that you are your own boss and you can work from the comfort of your house Source: Is BlackHat Considered illegal ? | GoldenBlogger.com - Make Money Online
Nice post Granit, I would say it revealed almost 80% the idea behinds blackhat methods. Most of the affiliate companies don't really care about the traffic until the advertisers start complaining. You are a genius.
Rep Granit for this interesting article! Personally I believe that, in order to do blackhat, you should be an "old wolf" of whitehat firstly so you know how you cover your tracks or footprints And sliknik, blackhat is not illegal ! Don't read just the title, read how Granit has explained various blackhat ways Cheers 0lgi
Not really , I think some newbies don't really know about internet marketting can still do some black hat tricks if they have knowledge of programming and hacking.
I don't understand why people want to opt in for Blackhat to generate leads. I mean it is way easier to make money from CPA via whitehat. All you need to do is to stop being stingie and spend those cash in the bank and start advertising. There is zero advantages using blackhat, you're like living in fear if you use blackhat tactics to make money. You have to go through everyday fearing that your network will found out your blackhat tactics and get banned then all your commission will probably gone.
I would say blackhat is illegal because you have to use fake/ stolen information with the permission/knowledge of the owner to get an offer completed. And why do ppl have to use blackhat? Because they don't want to spend money for adword or anything else since it's much easier and less expense.
Can you cite some case law, precedent, or at the very least the ordinance and or law being violated here?
Legal or illegal is not based on how we see thing we do , but how the company we are associated/affiliated with see how we do things. No company would allow you to be affiliated with them if you claim yourself as a black-hatter. It's an Axiom. Doesn't need any proof.
So again, its a question of: 1. Ethics 2. TOS violation Not a legal issue. At least not in the sense that one could be criminally or civilly litigated. I'm just questioning the semantics of the term used in the OP's question and the answers that have been handed down thus far. Using a term like "illegal" implies a certain criminal intent, or that a law is being broken. The reality here is that it is a contractual or terms of services violation that is in question, not an actual legal violation or law being broken.
Legality or Illegality would be in accordance to any governing body which at the macro level generally is the Government.But then, it can also be the organization you are affiliated with which was what I was talking about. I do get what you're saying and I do agree with that.What you've said is true.So is mine.By saying that, I'm not contradicting myself.It's contradistinction.
Illegal activities would be black hat for sure, Blak Hat is not necessarolky illegal though. Sort of like how all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Of course, in some places violating a TOS is breach of contract and can be enforced, and in that case almost anything that would be technically "black hat" wold also be, by definition, illegal. Depends on where you're at, I guess.