It is the technique for gathering information for a Web site owner about a user through a few lines of code that reside in the Web pages. This information is gathered through __________.

A spambot is an automated program that harvests email addresses or delivers bulk spam and is not code embedded in web pages to monitor visitor behavior.

Spyware is software installed directly onto a user's local machine that monitors activity, rather than server-side or page-embedded code placed by the site owner.

Web bugs, also called web beacons, are typically 1x1 transparent pixel images or small script fragments embedded directly into web page HTML that execute automatically when the page loads. They capture data such as the visitor's IP address, browser type, timestamp, and browsing behavior and send it back to a tracking server. This precisely matches the description of 'a few lines of code residing in web pages' used to gather information for the site owner.

Bogus spyware removal programs are malware that masquerade as legitimate security utilities to deceive users and do not operate as page-embedded tracking code.