I really wonder how effective these link networks are at SEO nowadays. Obviously it's a short term strategy either way, but can you get to first page of google for competitive terms by doing this stuff?
I think google has taken steps to stop this from an algorithm stand point but really I think most of there attempts are more marketing based. IE trying to scare people into not doing it anymore.
It also doesn't take exploiting sites to do it. You can just buy some aged domains and throw up wordpress.
The efficacy of this hack is nil as the "money domains" that were profiting from these backlinks had little domain authority or relevant traffic according to the author's article.
The only only way that linking strategies are viable anymore are gaining links from domains with authority or huge numbers of links.
Maybe if the hacker would have created tens of thousands of back links from vulnerable fashion blogs (same category of site as the money sites) they would've gotten some SEO juice.
If I'm on page 2 of a search and I want to get into that precious top 10 I can spam the site which is ranking above me until I'm there. Or I can threaten to do a really shitty job trying to blackhat SEO optimize someones site unless they pay me $x.
We often get abuse@ emails from people who have their link spammed on one of our clients domains and want it removed. We just link them to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main and wish them luck. In some cases these people paid for that 'service' in the past and now regret it.