black hat

Definitions

noun A Haredi Jew; a member of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
noun A villain or bad guy in a story, especially in a Western (a film or other work of the Western genre).
noun this sense?) (computing, slang) A malicious hacker who commits illegal acts.

From the black hats traditionally worn by men in Haredi communities.

From the black stetsons (cowboy hats) traditionally worn by such villains.

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On the spammier fringes is what’s known as “black hat” SEO, bad actors who use techniques with fabulously evil names such as “domain squatting”, “reputation abuse”, “obituary spam”, “keyword swarming” or “parasite hosting” to bring their content to the top of Google’s search results and turn a quick buck.

‘Google says I’m a dead physicist’: is the world’s biggest search engine broken? Tom Faber 2024