The landscape is a little different now than then.

At the time(and really, even now) people would get their eyeglasses from their local provider. Who cares, insurance probably covers some or all of it. Even getting contacts or glasses as a prescription was like pulling teeth, since they wanted to keep it in house.

So the new market of get your prescription, then buy online was born. And it was like the wild west, not full of eye care professionals but...mostly less than above board places all fighting for your click.

Think about it...if you finally decide to Google eyeglass frames or such, you were entering a whole new realm. And why fight over SEO, when you can just take your competition offline, as most people will click a link, watch it load for 5s, then click back and try the next.

I have no idea if the industry is still shady or not, but 20 years ago, it was full of nothing but bad actors.

I don't know if it matters at all to the conversation or not, but none of the actors(gambling or eyeglasses) were based in the US, despite their domain names and courting US customers. The DDoS company was based in the US.

> Who cares, insurance probably covers some or all of it

Exactly, this is why vision "insurance" is basically a scam, supported only by US tax laws that enable employers to offer vision "insurance" tax-free, while people buying their own eyeglasses have to pay with after-tax dollars.

Except where insanely inflated, glasses cost at most tens of dollars. Certainly not the kind of thing one needs insurance to cover.

Just a reminder that "insurance covers" doesn't mean society doesn't pay for it: all the people pay for it. The insurance company paying causes prices raises for everyone else, same country and abroad. So the whole world ends up paying more for that "insurance coverage": more for the product, more for the insurance, more in taxes that fund public free healthcare...