What is ‘Phishing’
Posted by admin | Posted in About Websites | Posted on 25-10-2009-05-2008
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The term is a variant of fishing, probably influenced by phreaking or password harvesting fishing, and alludes to baits used to “catch” financial information and passwords.
Phishing is a fraudulent process of attempting to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by representing or masking as a trustworthy entity. Mainly from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the general public. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate and original one. Even when using server authentication, it may require tremendous skill to detect that the website is fake. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures. (source – wikipedia)
