I have also heard this, cannot know for sure, but why should I be penalized for other sites link to me…
This could be used to take down your competitor very quickly.
Imagine, you set up a lot of balck hat seo’d sites and start to bombard your competitor… (As I remember on another forum the guys are trying to do this (maybe on SEOchat… cannot recall sorry.. Goggle Bowling or what was its name… They would like to proof it…)
Maybe the big G takes it into consideration, but I think it counts with the white sites/black sites ratio… I’m not sure, just thinking…