What is meant by phishing?

Hello,



Many of my friends are talking about phishing. Can anybody tell me what is phishing?



thanks.What is meant by phishing?
Phishing is a new word produced from 'fishing', it refers to the act that the attacker allure users to visit a faked Web site by sending them faked e-mails (or instant messages), and stealthily get victim's personal information such as user name,password, and national security ID, etc.



These information then can be used for future target advertisements or even identity theft attacks (e.g., transfer money from victims' bank account).



The frequently used attack method is to send e-mails to potential victims, which seemed to be sent by banks, online organizations, or ISPs.
Besides authentic looking e-mails, phishing may also refer to authentic looking websites (bank websites usually) but with their address different. These websites would look very much as the original ones but if you check their address you'd see that there is not https:// at their beginning and they usually ask in one form or another for your personal information that will help them steal you money basically.



All phishing scams are though based on the fooling of regular users to believe that the data information they are required to give is safe. This is why all banks say that they will never ask you for any such information over the web.What is meant by phishing?
Phishing is a scam that aims to steal people's identity, or acquire sensitive personal information; for example some spammers may use an email that looks authentic, in order to trick the email recipients into providing information that is personal, such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, user names and/or passwords.
Phishing is an identity theft scam in which "spammers" use an authentic-looking e-mail to trick recipients into providing personal information such as credit card numbers or social security numbers.What is meant by phishing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing