Rather than speculate on what you've just said, I think you need to provide a solid "business plan" before getting anywhere.

Most people are going to jump on you and ask "what does 'attempt to take it offline' mean."

There are most likely well-established groups and organizations out there aligned with the same intentions you have that could benefit from additional help, rather than you trying to start your own.

Well, that response in itself may be likely to stir up some conversation

A business plan is fundamental to success. It serves not only as a way to measure your accomplishments but also as a recruitment and investment tool.

At the very least, you're going to need to elaborate a little further on what exactly it is you want to do. After reviewing your first post, I'd expect the reader to be left wondering on several of the topics...

- How are you going to market your site? How do you plan to drive enough traffic to it to even make it worthwhile? How do you intend to compete with similar groups (e.g. IC3, WiredSafety)?

- What type of bad/risk sites? Sites promoting hacking? Sites promoting other illegal activity? What happens when someone provides a link to a child porn site? The second you, or any of your investigators, access it and download the images you have committed a felony.

- How do you intend to bring it offline? Do you intend to have legal counsel available?

Please understand I'm not trying to bring you down or discourage you from following through with something that you want to do. I'm all for the general idea and concept of being against cybercrime. This is just a small list of things to consider.

It's certainly a noble initiative TH2010!

I suppose that, what you mean, is a not an 'anti-cybercrime unit' as much as a 'group of security enthousiasts that cooperate and exchange information'.
In that case, I do believe you have come to a group of peeps that already do that, i.e. EHN

If you do actually mean more grandiose idea's, you can start it in whatever fashion you can think of, and I'll cheer you on However, if you want such a group to 'survive', there isn't really a way around the advice BillV has given already. Otherwise the possible members will just turn more their time to groups that already exist, imo. And a group like that without a structure, plan, or anything, won't be able to do that much against cybercrime, I suppose.

As a disclaimer: I'm a newbie, so what do I know. Just trying to insert a different perspective

I don't understand where you are coming from with the business plan angle. I never said anything about a business plan not being a good idea full stop, just at this stage of the project. However if you want to talk business let’s talk business.
True, a business plan is important for the success of a business, but not necessary. That however makes no difference because before a business plan is written up, market research would be carried out. This is done to find out if people would by the product or use the service but in my case they would be trying to find out if their business model is even viable.  Typically questionnaires would be written up and people of interest would be contacted, like for instance visiting a forum full of potential employees and posting the idea to gage people’s reactions.

Even if I had produced a business plan for this project before visiting the site. I would 100% not post it online for everyone to see. 99% of business owners require a non-disclosure to be signed before giving their very detailed private document about their business away.

I stressed in my first post that this is just an idea of a possible project. Nowhere did I say that it was a business idea.

As far as elaborating on the plan, I would be happy to answer any questions.

How am I going to market my website? I actually own a couple of websites at the moment so the website side of things won’t be a problem. I would more than likely use a little AdWords and produce some adverts having them placed on strategic websites that would see the adverts getting a high rate of clicks. With the right marketing and SEO traffic would build over time. Maybe competing with the other groups is the wrong way to go about it. From what I can tell about WiredSafety, they are just an advisory service with no information security team working with them, so that would be an area to look at.

Scam websites are estimated to cost UK consumers £3.5bn per year so it's a good place to start .I think that focusing solely on scam websites would be the best idea. Obviously if we did receive a link for a child porn website we would send the link onto the appropriate authorities. This removes the risk for the team while still doing something about the website.

How do you intend to bring it offline? That is where the skills of the team come in and would probably differ from case to case. Legal counsel would defiantly be something to think about for the future, yes.

Yeah, I understand. I am always up for a good debate.

Hi Anquilas,

Thanks for your input.

Yeah, thats exactly what I'm thinking. However a more close and personal team compared to everyone on this website, if you know what I mean?

At first we would start out as exactly that, a group of security enthousiasts with an aim to do what we can to reduce the threat of scam websites. As time moves on so would the team. Maybe going non-profit and start paying a wage to the members, get some offices, I don't know but I do know that you have got to start somewhere.

Thanks again.

Tayler

Real mature!

Don't get upset and all defensive. I was just trying to have a decent discussion.

You’re obviously a little immature to have an adult conversation with so I will take by conversation elsewhere, thanks for the entertainment though!

BW

Tayler Hughes

And just for the record, if my intentions were to act defensive and immature or set out to stifle your creativity, or attempt to shatter your dreams my responses would have been a little different...

I probably would have pointed you to more links about business plans and when to create one or general entrepreneurship websites that explain how to start and run a business.

Or may have asked how some of your other different, yet similar, projects have went?

But feel free to carry on with your personal attacks. I'm sure your future business partners won't mind.