An example of a phishing e-mail, disguised as an official e-mail from a
(fictional) bank. The sender is attempting to trick the recipient into
revealing confidential information by "confirming" it at the
phisher's website. Note the misspelling of the words
received and
discrepancy. Such mistakes are common in most phishing emails. Also note that although the
URL of the bank's webpage appears to be legitimate, it actually links to the phisher's webpage.
In the field of
computer security,
phishing is the
criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames,
passwords
and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an
electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular
social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT
administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public.
Phishing is typically carried out by
e-mail or
instant messaging,
[1] and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Even when using server authentication, it may require tremendous skill to detect that the website is fake. Phishing is an example of
social engineering techniques used to fool users,
[2] and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies.
[3] Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include
legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.
A phishing technique was described in detail in 1987, and the first
recorded use of the term "phishing" was made in 1996. The term is a
variant of
fishing,
[4] probably influenced by
phreaking,
[5][6] and alludes to baits used to "catch" financial information and passwords.
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