phishing
n.n. a trick where criminals send fake emails or messages to steal your private information. They often pretend to be a bank or a famous company to get your passwords or credit card numbers.
n. the fraudulent practice of sending electronic communications masquerading as a reputable entity to induce individuals to reveal personal information. Typically involves deceptive links to malicious websites designed to harvest credentials or financial data.
I deleted the email because I knew it was phishing.
The company's IT department sent out a warning after several employees fell victim to a phishing scam targeting their login details.
Modern phishing campaigns have become increasingly sophisticated, employing social engineering tactics and high-fidelity visual clones of legitimate banking portals to bypass traditional security awareness.
A variant spelling of fishing, influenced by the earlier hacker subculture practice of replacing the letter f with ph, as seen in phreaking. The analogy rests on the use of lures to catch a target.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Often used as a modifier before other nouns like 'scam', 'email', or 'attack'.
a phishing of my accounta phishing attack on my accountPhishing is usually treated as the name of the activity itself or used as an adjective; it does not typically take 'of' to describe the target.
Last updated July 22, 2026