Cloaking to a 404

Is it easy enough to do

[cabbie]

One for the blackhats.
I am toying with cloaking a site so when surfers look for it, it becomes a 404 and when google looks for it they get the real site.
Is this easy enough done and are there any pitfalls about from the ethical ones?
Cheers

[hakre]

yo cabbie,

take google on a trip to lead the users into a 404 error? it's not an ethical thing at all - just a question of use, isn't it?

or do you want to save bandwidth that it's necessary for users to use googles' cache ... ;)?

just asking
- hakre

[littleman]

Ethics aside, you have to think about the construction of such a system. Why send the users to a 404? Why not rout them to something more productive/profitable?

If you want to do this the Mort straight forward approach would be to use mod_rewrite and a NPH script. You use mod_rewrite to default all requests to the script and have the script determine to if it should feed content or through up a 404.

[cabbie]

Hakre - I am toying around with trying to hide a link to another site.Not ethical but maybe more ethical than if I didn't hide the link.te he.
I will probably disallow caching as well, shame shame!

Thanks Littleman.I'd probably prefer a 404 so people just thinks the sites down.I would only be using the site for a link to another.
Anyway seeing I know nothing about mod_rewrite I am abandoning the black path and am straightening my ways.:)
Thanks for the response
Cheers