In the context of web security, harvesters are automated programs (bots) designed to collect email addresses and contact form data on a massive scale. This information is often used for sending spam, launching phishing campaigns, or other malicious activities.
For example, a harvester might crawl a website, detect contact form fields, extract the submitted addresses, and store them in a database for later use in bulk email campaigns.
Common protections include using CAPTCHAs, spam filters, and email obfuscation techniques to make it harder for bots to harvest sensitive data.
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