Explain some terms to me please?

Hey guys,

I'm trying my best to soak up all the information in these forums.. and I was puzzled by a few terms I came across..

1) What is footprinting? I saw people talking about how they found footprints, and they don't want to share it..?

2) What is spoofing /cloaking?

Thanks!

A footprint is a pattern left by some automated tool, like a linking tool or a blog generator, that Google/Facebook/Twitter/etc. can find and either ban or discount.

Cloaking can be used on several levels, but a lot of what is done here is cloaking links to hide the referrer or make the referrer seem like it is from a different website. Many affiliate networks do not approve of black hat techniques, and therefore links have to be cloaked. There is a lot more about this on the left nav bar under Cloaking

Hmm.. why do people say they found a footprint then? Not sure what the point of that is...

Then they have found what terms to search in Google for a certain forum/blog etc. Like "Powered by Wordpress" is a footprint for most wordpress blogs, because they are mentioned at the bottom of the page.