Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
IMHO, the idea doesn't seem so far-fetched. Take a few hundred thousand bucks from a stash of drug or gambling proceeds, hire a few good programmers and an SEO, and flood the Web with millions of made-for-AdSense "scraper" pages, script-generated affiliate pages, ersatz "review" sites, and so forth. Bingo! The profits pour in, and they're all "legitimate." No need to break kneecaps, risk a jail sentence, or hide your identity from a state gaming commission. Just sit back and let Google, Yahoo, and MSN be your runners. With an opportunity like that, who needs extortion rackets or illegal numbers games?
There will always be those who see an "opportunity" for profit and take ...ummmm... aggressive advantage ....of it.
Controling such is the job of the search engines I believe.
dauction, do you mean "a leading directory" or "the leading directory"? If the latter, I'm not sure how much luck you're going to have in getting the FBI interested in your organized crime concerns about Yahoo.
Oragnised crime is a grey area. Many legitimate companies indulge in highly illegal activities, usually tax evasion, but also insider dealing and other less savoury pastimes.
So in short, no I don't think that "Al Capone" and his ancestors are taking over the web with Adsense scraper sites!
Matt
Geeze EFV, it sounds like you need a vacation.... maybe a nice trip through Europe.
Well, there is a thread on this forum titled "Should I charge a kill fee for a large Website?" So who's imagining things? :-)
Not easy for organized Crime to control that traffic in that situation
but with a volunteer directory it is easy to get your Family of associates involved and direct millions of visitors and hundreds of million in business to where ever you want it.
Ask any Prison Guard who runs the prisons
The previous is in no way irreverent to anyone named Guido . . .
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"Well, there is a thread on this forum titled "Should I charge a kill fee for a large Website?" So who's imagining things? :-)"
but is it possible that organized crime is trying to control (or at least profit from) the Web
EFV, read some internet news, it's not only possible organized crime is at work, it's being reported all the time. Most of what I read claims organized crime was behind some of the latest password sniffing and credit card phishing scams including custom written viruses and trojans now infecting people's machines for a variety of purposes. Some suspect them behind the rash of DDoS extortion attempts on the payment processors the FBI was looking into recently.
So racking up a bunch of made for AdSense sites to pocket free cash would not only make sense, they may be members of WebmasterWorld and asking our help to do it :)
What the heck, a stretch limo and thug are at the curb, I hear a knock at my door .....
It is not always the most comfortable of situations :).
The net requires a lot of highly technical knowledge and capabilities
that they are not exactly famous for.
However, nothing stops them from hiring 'brains' on the cheap, eager kids especially.
I would very carefully avoid anyone who wants you to make sites "disappear".
These guys are control freaks, understandably paranoid about anything
they don't understand.
If anything goes 'wrong', just guess who takes the blame.
If somebody asked me to make a site 'disappear' I would
simply explain that I didn't know how to do it. -Larry
However I can be persuaded to see your point of view without a horses head appearing.
"The net requires a lot of highly technical knowledge and capabilities that they are not exactly famous for. - More graduates are involved in organised crime than in the police force of the UK."
A convenient way of dealing with the issue, unfortunately most of the people who know me are well aware that it would be quite within my capabilities. Which is why I think the distinction between what I could do and what I will do becomes important.
