Cloaking

Cloaking in web development and online security refers to techniques used to hide or disguise content from certain users or search engines. It involves delivering different information based on who is accessing a website—often showing legitimate content to human visitors while presenting different, often malicious or optimized versions to search engines or automated systems. This can be used legitimately for personalization or security, but when used maliciously, cloaking can deceive search engines to improve rankings or hide harmful activities, making it a concern for website integrity and transparency.