Computer Term

Spoof, or spoofing

In networking, the term is used to describe a variety of ways in which hardware and software can be fooled. Example:

IP spoofing: playing trick that makes a message appear as if it came from an authorized IP address.
e-mail spoofing: forging an e-mail header to make it appear as if it came from somewhere or someone other than the actual source.

Extract from www.webopedia.com