What is meant by the term phishing?

Basically - it is 'fishing' - trying to catch something or someone.



It is a type of deception designed to steal your valuable personal data, such as credit card numbers, IDs, other account data and passwords, or other information.



Examples of phishing scams could be:

鈥n e-mail messages,

鈥n a Web site that accepts donations for charity but is a fake.

鈥n Web sites that spoof your familiar sites using slightly different Web addresses, hoping you won't notice - they may just change once character in their name eg St Andrew's Building Society may become Snt Andrew's Building Society in the fake site.

鈥n your mobile phone



You will usually find that these kind of scams place a link in e-mail messages etc that appear to come from a service that you trust, like your bank, credit card company.



Hope this helps you. As usual - don't disclose PINs or ID info etc to ANYONE on the net. And if someone tells you you have a million dollars waiting to be collected ... just give me your account and PIN nos ... well, you know what to do ... and you will now recognise it as ... FISHING - oops, I mean PHISHING!What is meant by the term phishing?
Phishing is an act of sending an e-mail to user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam users into surrendering private information that will be used for theft. The email directs the user to visit a Website where they are asked to update personal information, such as password and credit card, and bank account numbers. The Website , however, is fraud and set up only to steal user's information.What is meant by the term phishing?
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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing



Basically, it's the same as some stranger in a suit walking up to you and saying, "I'm your bank manager, give me your bank account information".What is meant by the term phishing?
Phishing is when a website, or a person pretends to be someone/something else in order to get personal information.



For example, if I were to send you an email saying



"I'm from your bank, and I need to know your account numbers and PIN in order to verify your account"



That would be phishing.
Phishing is just like it sounds...you are dangling something out there that looks appealing, such as a worm on a hook, or a fake myspace log in page. In a nutshell, it is a legitimate looking website or service that has intentions to stell personal info by duping.