Phishing
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English
Etymology
Respelling of fishing
Noun
(gerund)
phishing
- (computing) The act of sending email that falsely claims to be from a legitimate organisation. This is usually combined with a threat; for example, an account will close, a balance is due, or information is missing from an account. The email will ask the recipient to supply confidential information, such as bank account details, PINs or passwords; these details are then used by the owners of the website to conduct fraud.
Adjective
- (FISH.ing) pp. Creating a replica of an existing Web page to fool a user into submitting personal, financial, or password data.
Notes
The term phishing comes from the fact that Internet scammers are using increasingly sophisticated lures as they "fish" for users' financial information and password data. The most common ploy is to copy the Web page code from a major site — such as AOL — and use that code to set up a replica page that appears to be part of the company's site. (This is why phishing is also called spoofing.) A fake e-mail is sent out with a link to this page, which solicits the user's credit card data or password. When the form is submitted, it sends the data to the scammer while leaving the user on the company's site so they don't suspect a thing.
Related terms
See also
- Wikipedia article on phishing
