Black Hat

noun
plural noun: black hats

A marketer who uses their skills and knowledge in nefarious ways either for themselves or clients. Derived from the term to describe hackers with malicious intent.

“The black hat SEO built multiple fake blogs and used them to rank for lucrative terms in Google.”

“The black hat social media marketer used fake contests to increase like counts on their Facebook page.”

Also Written As:

• Blackhat
• Black-hat
• Plural: Blackhats
• Plural: Black-hats

Antonym: White Hat

History

First coined by Richard Stallman, a programmer and activist, some time in the 1980’s most likely though no exact date has been published. Richard sought to describe two different types of programmers turned hacker, those who would use their programming knowledge for good and those who would use it for their own selfish devices. This led him to describe black hat and white hat hackers, the later of which would use programming skills and hacking to benefit society.

Today we use the term ‘hacker’ most often to describe a black hat, while many white hat hackers are hired by major tech corporations to help find bugs or security holes in their programs.

Source: O’Brien, Marakas, James, George (2011). Management Information Systems. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/ Irwin. pp. 536–537. ISBN 978-0-07-752217-9.