Even the big corporations using sneaky tactics

bad link monkey - no banana

[DXL]

Although I have a disclaimer stating that I refuse to engage in three-way linking, I still get requests for me to link to an obviously different site than the one they my reciprocal would be placed on.

Today I received an email from an employee of an extremely reputable logo company which wanted to trade links. I was pretty surprised, until I looked closer and realized that the reciprocal link would have been placed on an identical domain name (companyname.com) but with a hyphen following the company name with a word added. I think that most designers in the link building game would notice it, but I can't help but think that a lot of other site owners wouldn't. While I can understand why such a big company would keep the domains similar, I can't help but see the tactic as also being somewhat deceptive. The reciprocal link pages are all PR0-PR3, whereas their corporate site is PR6. This seem sneaky to anyone else?

[DemonsInside]

It doesn't seem sneaky to me, although a bit deceptive and surely stupid. As you say it is a big company it's not a good idea for them to built 3-way links, since now G is tracking these links..or at least part of them. Furthermore, as a large company they should be able to spend lots of money for bought links, which is way better.
Cheers to all members - I am new to this forum.