phishing - "the act of sending an email to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise, in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information, that will be used for identity theft."

Source: Canadian Payments Association - Risk Guide

phishing - "criminals' creation and use of e-mails and websites--designed to look like e-mails and websites of well-known legitimate businesses, financial institutions, and government agencies--in order to deceive Internet users into disclosing their bank and financial account information or other personal data such as usernames and passwords"

Source: United States Department of Justice

For information about phishing see the Anti-phishing Working Group Web site at http://www.antiphishing.org

See also: vishing, smishing, pharming, spear phishing

 

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