Scraper" refers to screen scrapers, programs that extract data from websites. "

A form filler is the opposite of a screen scraper, which extracts data from a form.

At the start of August we were cancelling around 450 tickets a day booked by screen scrapers,' he added. '

Screen scrapers: is malware that permits someone else to see what you can see on your screen.

In such cases, the only feasible solution may be to write a screen scraper which "pretends" to be a user at a terminal.

He writes: Steve, is there any way to reliably thwart hardware and software keyloggers and screen scrapers on a public computer?

As a concrete example of a classic screen scraper, consider a hypothetical legacy system dating from the 1960s - the dawn of computerized data processing.

Ryanair said earlier this month that Irish screen scraper BravoFly Ltd had agreed to stop using Ryanair's Web site after the airline took legal action.

It also said screen scrapers were slowing down its website, preventing its usual customers from making bookings, and violating its terms and conditions, price guarantees and copyright.

Europe's biggest budget carrier said it started last week cancelling bookings on its Web site made by online ticket agents known as 'screen scrapers' who were then selling them on to passengers at inflated prices.

At the start of this month, the Irish airline began cancelling and reimbursing around 450 bookings a day made by online ticket agents known as screen scrapers who were selling the tickets to passengers at inflated prices.

The screen scraper might connect to the legacy system via Telnet, emulate the keystrokes needed to navigate the old user interface, process the resulting display output, extract the desired data, and pass it on to the modern system.

"We hope that by getting rid of screen scrapers we will speed up passenger processing times on Ryanair.com as well as ensuring that Ryanair passengers are not paying unnecessary handling charges or higher fares," spokesman Howard Millar said.

Europe's biggest budget carrier said last week it had started reimbursing up to 500 tickets each day - bookings made on its website by online ticket agents known as 'screen scrapers' - because they violate its copyright terms and slow down the website.