[BG Legal] Blackhat Seo Legality?

[Senoska]

A good portion of my business is being dedicated to blackhat seo applications. What are the laws pertaining to this?

For example, selling hotmail, aol, yahoo, digg, youtube, etc accounts. (Or rather, the time invested to make the accounts, not the accounts themselves, wink wink.) on the scale of thousands.

Also, what about selling software that mimics a user registering on one of these sites? Is it illegal to have a computer automate a process on a website? Does it matter if proxies are involved?

Let me know.

[volcanicweather]

I'm not a SEO person but I do work in interactive marketing... you would have to check within each TOS of every service (hotmail, yahoo, etc) to see exactly their language in regards to automated account creating to determine the legality.

Also who on earth would want to make an account on Digg. Reddit is where it's at.

[Senoska]

I make accounts on all (or any) social media site. How about that, haha.

[archibaldcrane]

I would assume that the TOS for every site would prohibit automated account creation.

[Nephlite]

check within each TOS of every service (hotmail, yahoo, etc) to see exactly their language in regards to automated account creating to determine the legality.

This basically. I would associate this type of business as being closely related to selling virtual goods in an MMO. There's not much activity on the law front but the Supreme Court ruled in a recent decision that it is unlawful to sell goods in an MMO if said goods were normally free under the ToS of the written MMO (some kind of fine print thing, which we all know it'd take 20 years to read that BS). It's under federal internet laws i'm assuming and it's usually treated like some type of fraud (in D.C., Fraud is a felony and can net you life in prison for the serious crimes such as credit card fraud over $100,000 etc.)